Oral History Interview
with
Sallie Clark
Interview by
Deborah Smith
19 July 2005
CSHP 0007
Colorado Springs History Project
CSHP
Pikes Peak Library District, Special Collections
Copyright 2015
Colorado Springs History Project
The Colorado Springs History Project was conducted between the years 2005-2010 in a joint effort to document and update the history of Colorado Springs from mid-20th century to 2010. This volunteer team included members from the region’s major academic libraries and faculties, as well as the Pikes Peak Library District and the Pioneers Museum. Administered and supervised by the Colorado Springs History Project Committee, the project interviewers consisted of a number of local volunteers.
The oral history portion of The Colorado Springs History Project identified and interviewed individuals who had helped to shape the city of Colorado Springs in various and diverse ways. Subjects were also sought as representative of inhabitants of the Pikes Peak region and could provide insight into the city’s story in the second half of the twentieth century. Interviews reflect the rapid growth of Colorado Springs from the post-World War II era to the early part of the twenty first century. Interviews touch on business and government relations, religious organizations, various non-profits, the Air Force Academy, Colorado College, key local businesses, and the growth of many important charitable services within the community. Several interviews touch on education in Colorado Springs, highlighting both secondary and post-secondary educational institutions.
The collection is comprised of 50 tapes, 19 CDs, and 2 DVDs with 32 individual interviews. These interviews are housed in the archives of Pikes Peak Library District’s Special Collections. A complete listing of the interviews is available at the Special Collections reference desk. Transcripts for many of the interviews are available for use.
Digitization
Audio from the Colorado Springs History Project was digitized between 2009 - 2011 and is available for study and use in the Special Collections department.
The Colorado Springs Oral History Project
Sallie Clark
Oral History Interview
CSHP 0007
Deborah Smith
19 July 2005
Colorado Springs, Colorado
[AUDIO BEGINS]
Smith Smith to Tape 1 of an oral history interview with Sallie Clark in her home her business Holden House 1902 Bed and Breakfast and that's at 1102 West Pikes Peak Avenue in Colorado Springs. Today is July 19th, 2005. And we're meeting at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Okay, all right some of the questions we'd like to go over with you is when and where were you born?
Clark I was born in Long Beach, California.
Smith Long Beach, California. And what do you remember about your parents?
Clark Well I remember a lot, they're still alive.
Smith They're still alive, okay.
Clark They're still together.
Smith All right, what are their names?
Clark Barbara and Tom Blackman.
Smith Barbara and Tom.
Clark B-L-A-C-K-M-A-N. My dad is a school teacher. He was first a junior high teacher and then taught high school for a number of years. He grew up in Pueblo, Colorado.
Smith He grew up in Pueblo, okay.
Clark He graduated from UNC at Greeley.
Smith Oh! And then he went to California?
Clark He went to California to get a job because teachers got paid more there which they still do. [laughter]
Smith Yes, that's probably true.
Clark And then he came back to get his masters here and then moved back. Yeah, and met my mom there and married her so.
Smith Met your mom met back in?
Clark In California.
Smith Okay, all right. And -- well you just answered. Well where did they come from originally?
Clark My mom was from Pasadena, California. My dad was from Pueblo, Colorado.
Smith Okay.
Clark Yeah.
Smith Is this one Muffin?
Clark That's Muffin and the black one’s Mingtoy and usually they're not both out at the same time. So I don’t know, they're just curious about you, yeah.
Smith And your grandparents, where they come from?
Clark I had -- one of my grandmothers was actually from Wales and came over here when she was three years old. And my grandfather on my dad's side, he was from Canada. And they settled in Pueblo, Colorado and had a farm there. On my mom's side, my Nana was from California and was born, I believe, in Long Beach. And she was a seamstress and then my grandfather, I don’t remember, I mean I remember him but he was pretty much retired when I was growing up on my mom's side.
Smith Are any of these pictures, are they your Grandad?
Clark This is my great grandmother and grandfather from Wales.
Smith Oh, wow!
Clark My paternal grandparents.
Smith That's very interesting. And in childhood, any special memories you remember? Anything that stands out?
Clark I grew up… I was very fortunate, I grew up in a really good family and we weren’t wealthy. My dad was a school teacher, my mom worked in camera stores. She did photography inside and worked in a camera store for her aunt for a long time. And I have two brothers and a sister and… but I was the baby of the family so my sister and I are seven years apart. So I was kind of the late child and ended up being home when a lot of the kids were already gone and off on their own. So it was kind of sometimes like being an only child after you know, as I was growing up. But had really good parents, good role models. My dad was involved in local politics and ended up being Mayor and City Council member of Seal Beach, California. And my mom was very involved in Republican women and many volunteer causes. She was always volunteering for something. And our church. I’m a Methodist and was very involved in our little church in Seal Beach. So I was one of those kids that didn’t have a difficult… I mean you know we weren’t rich but we got along but fine.
Smith Okay. What did you want to be when you grew up?
Clark Actually, first I want to be a teacher and then I wanted to be a nurse. And I actually had a little school room, my dad built a little shed in the back and all the kids had to come to school in the summer time. So I was the teacher then. And then I guess that was the beginning of my leadership skills, I don’t know. And then I -- my brother went away to Vietnam and I always had this desire to want to help others. And you know I had this sort of dream when I was a little girl that I could be a nurse and go into the Army and go take care of my brother in Vietnam. And so that didn’t happen but I ended up in the nursing profession working for a cancer specialist.
Smith This sounds like the nursing and the Vietnam War, doesn’t it sound like MASH? I loved the whole series.
Clark It was just kind of the -- I think it was the time, that I wanted to help my brother and he had gone into the Army and he came back thankfully. He was a Vietnam vet. And I just have always been kind of a service oriented person. So when I met and married my husband we lived in San Diego for about five years when he was in the Navy. And then we decided he was going to get out of the Navy and we moved to Colorado Springs. So we'd spent our honeymoon here, my Grandmother lived in Pueblo and I'd spend every summer in Colorado. So we decided to move here and wanted a change in my sort of career. At the time I was getting a little burned out on cancer patients and dealing with the death and the dying issues. And so came here and started the bed and breakfast in 1986, we bought the house in '85.
Smith And I was looking through the renovation, it's impressive. And while you’ve already answered the question on how your family earned an income. Any unique family traditions that carries on down to you?
Clark I would say my mom is the perpetual party person in the way that she likes to hold family gatherings, not parties, those kind of parties. But she really does care a lot about family and birthday parties and anniversaries and those kinds of things. She was one of those entertainment people that could you know plan a party for 100 people in 24 hours. I mean she's just the kind of person that can throw that, pull that together pretty easily.
Smith Wow!
Clark She loves entertaining, she loves to cook and she's a great housekeeper, good decorator. I think I got a lot of my -- my sister's very meticulous. And so I think I just sort of absorbed a lot of that while I was growing up. So this was sort of a perfect fit for that.
Smith Okay. And -- you’ve already answered on prominent people in your family or just kind of an average family. Your father was the Mayor in Pueblo.
Clark No, he was the Mayor of Seal Beach, California.
Smith Oh that's right. Any other prominent people?
Clark No, not really. I mean my family was pretty average I think in terms of my growing up. But he was probably the biggest influence in terms of politics but I never expected to get involved in politics. We were just expected as kids to pull our weight and do our chores and my mom and dad really encouraged independence and trusted me. When I was younger, I started working when I was like sixteen at Marie Callenders as a hostess and then worked my way up to waitressing and did that for a lot of years while I was going to school. And that really kind of I think brought out my personality because I was very shy at the time, and was kind of afraid of people. So..
Smith That's part of coping. [laughter]
Clark I know. But I think you find a lot of people in public service that are like that. I was talking to, the other night, Miss California, the Rodeo Queen and she said she was extremely shy and she kind of became a rodeo queen and became Miss California Rodeo. And the one thing that she learned was public speaking and being able to deal with crowds and people. No I think that you develop -- my parents never pushed me, they just sort of said, whatever a level you feel comfortable, get out there and do it and I did it. [laughter]
Smith Very good. And you went to school also in California?
Clark I did. I graduated in Huntington Beach High School. And then I went Bryman College in Long Beach. And also did study at Golden West College.
Smith Okay. And what was your favorite subject?
Clark I think certainly when I was in high school, I think it was English and writing and I was never big on math, the sciences. I was more of an English and liked sort of the softer subjects I think. I've loved history, I always have loved history and those kinds of things. I’d take those kinds of classes, literature.
Smith And what were your college years like? Easy?
Clark You know, I studied in more of a… concentrated on my Nursing. So it was just basically focused on that. And I lived at home and I didn’t participate a lot in a lot of the school activities other than just my studies.
Smith Okay. And at that time did you have any focus on what you might be later on in life, your career goals, did you -- was it Nursing?
Clark Pretty much. I really liked taking care of people, the service industry. Starting out doing the restaurant business and then working in the nursing section segment of my life. And then I was just kind of ready for a change. And my husband and I had loved traveling to bed and breakfasts and we just kind of thought this would be something that would be fun. So we did about three and a half years of research and then opened the Bed and Breakfast in 1985. We bought the house in '85 and opened in '86.
Smith That was quick.
Clark It was fast.
Smith Was the Marie Callenders, that's a restaurant?
Clark That's a restaurant.
Smith Okay. They make nice pies.
Clark They make really good pies. [laughter]
Smith That's how I did it.
Clark And my -- yeah, my hips showed it after a while when trying to get into those uniforms.
Smith [laughter] Okay, so you moved here in 1985 in Colorado Springs. Based on being here in the summer time and…
Clark Loved Colorado Springs, loved Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, all of the things to do and see here. We felt that Colorado Springs had really good tourism base and so it was a good location plus it had enough job opportunities for my husband. When he got out of the Navy, he got a job here initially for Kaman Sciences and worked for Kaman for a long time. And it was bought out by ITT and then he recently changed jobs a couple of years ago.
Smith Okay. Where is he working now?
Clark He works at L3 Communications. But he works at Schreiver Air Force Base.
Smith Okay. My husband goes back and forth there too.
Clark It’s a ways to go.
Smith Yeah it is, it sure is.
Clark I mean an hour drive.
Smith Yeah.
Clark One way.
Smith That's true. And how would you characterize the community and how it's changed since you first came here?
Clark Well I think it was certainly a much smaller community when we moved here. Probably 180,000 I think and then it went up to about 220, it went down a little bit at a certain point in the 80's when there was a savings and loan scandals and things going on. And they were -- people were leaving town, they weren’t coming to town. I think there was certainly more of a focus on the natural beauty of Colorado Springs and kind of having that small town feel. And I see what's happened and it's not necessarily a bad thing but it certainly transitioned into more of a city environment where we've got a lot of growth going on North and East. This part of town…and one of the reasons we moved to Old Colorado City area was because we knew that growth wouldn’t happen around us, we knew what we were getting, we knew what you see is what you get. We wouldn’t be going to buy on a five acre parcel and then have everything build around us. As we knew that this was kind of in the center of the town, it was a good location. We've seen ups and downs in the tourism industry. But I think the good things about what I see in Colorado Springs is more of a growth towards the arts and culture. Which I think we've always done a good job with that but I think there is so much more focus on that now that it's really great. I think that there's certainly a very supportive military contingent here. And I think that the general public is very supportive of our military in the community. But it's not like being in a military town, it doesn’t feel like that. You don’t see people walking around in uniforms all the time. Whereas when you're in San Diego or ports where we were used to being -- you just commonly see uniforms. And you just don’t see that here, unless you're at a military function and then you do see them. So I think that's part of just the transition of Colorado Springs. A good focus on history, historical sites. I would like to see more of that historical preservation attitude. I think that we tend to have let's tear it down and build new instead of preserving certain buildings that we could. I work on several sort of historical projects and a little bit involved with Chadbourn Mission, which is down in the Confluence Park, now American Beautiful Park area, a little tiny mission down there, we're trying to get some funds for them. And the Fire Museum, the Lester Williams Fire Museum which is at the Fire Training Center and Operations Center. And where we've just had a building donated to us. It's old Fire Station 4, so that's another project I kind of work on.
Smith And you saved your fire station too, didn’t you?
Clark Yeah. I kind of got involved on that level first. And that's sort of how I got involved in local politics. And before that I was on the tourism board and have been very active with my husband in the bed and breakfast industry. We basically started the Bed and Breakfast Association in 1987 but before there was anything, any association.
Smith In Colorado?
Clark In Colorado, in the state. So we traveled around, we got people to sort of buy into it and now it's a fairly large organization. So that's nice.
Smith Yeah.
Clark I mean it's nice to see.
Smith Some people don’t want to walk into the Clarion.
Clark Right. And we saw a need for networking. You know I’m a big one for partnerships I think that we tend to get so territorial sometimes. And when business is bad you tend to get even more territorial because it's like it's my business and your business. Whereas if you kind of all work together as an industry, you can all partner together, utilize your money more efficiently to advertise yourself as a group and then everyone benefits not just you. Whereas if you try to make yourself an island, it's just too hard to compete sometimes. And when you're competing with the Marriott, it's better for you to be as a group and try and -- then the group can compete with the Marriot family. It's a little hard for the Holden House to do that.
Smith That is smart, yeah.
Clark Not that there is anything against Marriot. [laughter]
Smith No, no, that's true. [laughter] I understand where you're coming from. So the city when you moved out here was you said about 180,000 people.
Clark Yeah. Around 180, 189,000. Today it's around 380,000 probably. Probably pushing 400,000 in the city. And 500,000 in the county, if you include El Paso County.
Smith We are growing. When you moved here, the weather, did that put you off, scare you or anything?
Clark No, actually I love the snow but I love the summers here. I like the dry climate, I like the beautiful mountains and I love hiking and doing the outdoor activities. Of course I don’t get enough time to do that anymore but that's one of the reasons we moved here. Because we love the mountains, we liked being in the city and having the convenience of being right in the middle of town but being able to hop in your car and be in Cheyenne Canyon within ten minutes. And be on hiking trails where you barely see another person and it's just I mean I don’t know where you can live that you have that convenience of being able to be at the mall in ten minutes or be at a hiking trail in ten minutes.
Smith Right. That is true. Yeah, it's true, it is. Okay. And you answered my next question about outdoor activities…and when you get time, right? Times are short for you. And you mentioned you met your husband in California?
Clark Right.
Smith Okay.
Clark Very mutual through his relatives and my parents.
Smith His name is Welling?
Clark Welling.
Smith Okay. And he was in the Navy. And I read also that he brought back some oriental treasures for the decorations?
Clark Yeah we have. I mean we have a lot of things that he picked up in his travels overseas. Like these big pictures up here.
Smith That's what I thought, yeah.
Clark And then my grandmother had a lot of things that we've just sort of collected from her. And we sort of became the collectors of all the family heirlooms. So now people give them to us.
Smith Lucky for you. I read about that you had the tea service, the Welsh tea service?
Clark Right. I have my grandmother, my great grandmother's tea service and the Gaudy Welsh, which is in the cupboard. It dates back about 300 years. Through our family, it's in the corner cupboard. We’ll have to take a look at that.
Smith Sounds interesting. And some of your best friends in the area, can you list those?
Clark Well a lot of innkeepers that I have sort of grown up with I guess in our industry. It's kind of funny because we used to say in the bed and breakfast industry and one of my friends who opened the B&B down the street and she's since closed. But when I first told her, she's opening a B&B, I said you don’t have friends, you just have innkeepers because you have no time really to be -- the people that you would like to spend time with, you're just too busy running your business to spend time with them. But most of your close friends are innkeepers. In my case I have political friends too that… Margaret Radford who is a city councilwoman from Pat Fejedelem who runs our Hearts Inn. And we have a small group of bed and breakfasts called the Authentic Inn’s Group and we meet monthly and pool together our resources and do marketing ideas and those kinds of things. And so that's my innkeeping friends group. And then I have Jan Doran who works with CONO which Council of Neighbors and Organizations. And CONO is a neighborhood umbrella group that a lot of our neighborhood organizations belong to. And so then Organization West Side Neighbors which are a neighborhood group. I don’t have a lot of super close friends but I do have a lot of people that I'm in contact with everyday.
Smith Okay. And why are you interested in tourism? What is the big pull towards tourism?
Clark Well I think certainly because I'm in that business. In fact we had guests last -- well just a few days ago who said every question they asked me I have sort of an answer for them. And they're like are you just like a walking tourism kiosk or something? [laughter] I knew -- they said well what's special going on? And I said well you might want to go see the Jubilee exhibit over at the Fine Arts Center or the Garden of the Gods or you could go rafting and do the raft and rails. I just know a lot about tourism probably because I served on the Travel and Tourism Authority Board for seven years. After we lost our tourism tax because of the Tabor Amendment the voters turned down the tourism tax which was funding tourism at the tune of around 11 to 13 million dollars a year. Well we lost that completely in 1992 when Tabor passed. And so in 1993 there was no money for tourism at all. So we constantly made a new board called the Travel and Tourism Authority and I served on that particular board for seven years. And then the state came through and we changed the legislation and created the Colorado Tourism Office. Still not funded at the level where it needs to be. But tourism has continually had difficulty getting funding. So I've always been a tourism advocate. Because of the economic benefits, the sales tax revenue, it's a clean industry, it brings in people who come and stay and leave. They bring their money and then they go home. And they add estimates or they add 40% of your sales tax based on local economy without putting the burden on the infrastructure. So they come and go. But some decide to stay. [laughter]
Smith Some do.
Clark Some do. And that means we're doing our job I guess in selling our area that is such a wonderful place visit and live.
Smith It is. What's your favorite place in the whole world?
Clark Oh in the whole world?
Smith In the whole world.
Clark Gosh I don’t know, I think right here. I just I love the Pikes Peak region.
Smith And do you like traveling a lot?
Clark We don’t, we're not able to travel a whole lot. You know when you own a business like this you're pretty much, not that we're stuck but it's just very difficult to get away. Friends of ours who used to own a bed and breakfast in Crested Butte say our guests do everything we moved here to do. They moved to Crested Butte so they could ski and while their guest are out skiing they were cleaning room. I mean that's because that's just the nature of the business. Somebody’s got to do the work.
Smith Yes, exactly. Have you been outside the country at all?
Clark Yeah, we've been to a lot of things in British Columbia then to Scotland, England, Wales.
Smith Did you do any genealogy when you were there in Wales?
Clark No. We visited relatives. We do have relatives that we do know. They’ve been here and we’ve been there. So we sort of keep in touch with them.
Smith Okay. And other places in America other than in California and Colorado Springs, some of the places that you've visited?
Clark I've been to most of the western states. Certainly I grew up in California, I've been to almost every area in California. And then I've been to Oregon, certainly New Mexico, Arizona, Utah. And Colorado, I traveled that, Colorado. I've been to Kansas and Nebraska, not done a lot of sight seeing in those two states. We've been to Wyoming, Montana. So mostly western states. I've been to Washington DC on trips and Virginia and Maryland. My husband graduated from the Naval Academy. So every once in a while we go back there for the reunion, we try to take some time. We've been to Kentucky and Ohio.
Smith That's a lot of places. [laughter]
Clark I started thinking about it… It doesn’t seem like that I've been to that many places. Never been to New York, though.
Smith Never been to New York, okay. I could bet on that you can land it sometime. Upstate New York is pretty and my husband's from that side. A lot of ferries, I loved it. Okay and I saw your before and after book for the renovations there. And what do you think is the most successful attraction in Pikes Peak?
Clark You mean in this area?
Smith In this area.
Clark I would say Garden of the Gods, that's probably the top of the list and Pikes Peak itself. And those are probably the ones to draw people. And I certainly have a great appreciation for Katherine Lee Bates and America the Beautiful.
Smith Yes I do too.
Clark And I was very happy that the city named Confluence Park, America the Beautiful Park.
Smith She wasn’t going to get her quarters [inad]
Clark I never liked the name Confluence Park anyway. [laughter]
Smith And my teacher taught us that at Manitou Cliff Dwellings that that used to be or is a replica.
Clark Well they're not actually replicas. And I don’t know, one of my books I think it's Newport in the Rockies. It talks about how they moved the cliff dwellings from southwest Colorado, I don’t know if you're aware of that. They came from the Mesa Verde area and in fact at one point in the early 1900’s there was a lawsuit that took place in terms of when Mesa Verde National Park was established. There was the accusation that they'd been taken from the park. And then that never transpired. I had heard that they were not successful that they had apparently come from outside Mesa Verde National Park. But no one was actually quite sure I think. But they were dismantled stone by stone and brought and rebuilt here. But during that, it was during the early 1900’s before transportation was what it is today. So that more people could be able to see the cliff dwellings without having to go to Durango.
Smith Right, exactly.
Clark Cortez and the Four Corners area to see them.
Smith Right, that's quite a bit. Okay. And you already mentioned tourism, we're talking about tourism how it's changed and it's grown and it's slacked off a little bit and now it's back up again.
Clark It's starting to move in an appropriate direction. We’re about up about… so far about 20% this year over last year.
Smith That's good.
Clark About in June, I think we're about 100 rooms ahead of where we were the year before. So it kind of is good.
Smith Well I'm certainly one of those tourists back in … about 12 years ago, I was a tourist and I fell in love with the area.
Clark We spent our honeymoon here in 1980 and stayed with my grandmother and traveled around Colorado. My dad was a history teacher so I got a lot of influence from historical sites. Mesa Verde is one of my favorite parks to go to.
Smith That is beautiful.
Clark I love the desert; I mean I just like it. I like it as a change and I think the cliff dwellings are so interesting.
Smith That is right, that's beautiful. Remember back when General Palmer founded the city, he pushed for a health resort. Do we still do that a lot? Do we, say come and smell the waters of Manitou?
Clark Well I think Manitou has certainly worked to restore their mineral springs and make walking tours. I certainly think there is a resurgence of that in health spas. And when you look at the number of day spas around here, they're probably now ten around Colorado Avenue. And certainly the Broadmoor has done an amazing job and I know that Cheyenne Mountain Resort is going back towards resorts and individuals versus just conferences. They've been trying to get out of that just that they're just for conferences and trying to get people in there to use the golf courses and the facilities that are more spa related. I think there's a big and certainly a big demand for spas now.
Smith That was at the origin…that’s how I feel.
Clark It brings you around full circle if you think about that. Not too many people with tuberculosis these days.
Smith We don’t want them to come for that reason but it is a healthy place. And do you still feel that the Pikes Peak region is still charming as far as the western?
Clark Yeah. And I think that what impresses me most about this, as conservative as our area tends to be in terms of politics, we still support things like open space. And I think we do such a good job at non-profit support. Even though we don’t necessarily want that to come out of tax dollars but in terms of our parks, people have overwhelmingly approved the tax for parks. They appreciate public safety and they appreciate good transportation systems. And while we tend to be very anti-tax, we realize that there are important things that we would like to see and we don’t want every square inch of our land to be developed. We want to make sure that we have open spaces like Red Rock Canyon and section 16 in the Garden of the Gods. Open space areas where kids can play and see nature. Recently the county just opened Paint Mines Park which is out east by Calhan and it's a really little gem that you don’t even really know is there. And then you get out there and you see where the Indians, used clay to make color in their fabrics. And they would color their pots with it. It's like a clay and it's in layers and has different colors and it's really beautiful. It's called Paint Mines Park. It's out by Calhan out by where the county fair is actually going to be this coming week.
Smith That sounds nice. So these events like this new park where they got the clay out and the rodeo, all those things still bring in a lot of people? Christmas, do you think?
Clark Well I think that it's always a challenge to get people here in the winter time. Most of our traffic tourism wise is from Denver, from in state. And they come here not necessarily to ski, at least to Colorado Springs because there's no skiing here. And so I think that there is a certainly a draw here from people from Denver to get away from what they think is the big big city to the smaller community. Colorado Springs is very different from Denver.
Smith Our winters aren't severe though.
Clark No.
Smith I know it's tough getting some people out here and convincing them.
Clark Golf in the winter time!
Smith Right, exactly, you never know.
Clark Grasses are a little dry.
Smith Right.
Clark It's Colorado Springs though.
Smith Do you think some of today's terrorism has caused any problems with tourism?
Clark I think that initially there certainly was, I mean after 9/11. We saw an extreme drop off mainly because the airlines were down there for a while. And then it started to recover and then we dealt with the Hayman fire which was the next big disaster that happened in this area. Colorado Springs was on the map of being on fire and so nobody wanted to come, people were canceling reservations. We’d try and say there is no fire in Colorado Springs and they didn’t believe you. But I saw in the news that it's right near Colorado Springs. And so and the state is on fire and when only -- I think it was 4% of the state that was having fires. It was all over national and international media. And I know the Broadmoor lost some considerable international travelers. Some people that have seen it on international news and thought I'm not going to Colorado, it's on fire. And so it was just kind of unfortunate that we had a couple of -- when we were finally starting to recover then we had another disaster that had nothing to do with 9/11, it just had to do with drought. And that's impacted us certainly. And now this is the first year we're seeing -- last year was slightly coming up and then this year we're seeing a better resurgence. At least knock on wood that it will stay that way.
Smith Right. Back to when I came out in '92. To me there was a lot of people around from all different states. I was just right in the bunch with all of them.
Clark And you normally, I don’t see as much anymore, but all of a sudden usually when Labor Day or when Memorial Day hit, all of the sudden you’d start seeing all the out of state license plates. And you knew right away, tourist season was upon us.
Smith Right.
Clark Yeah.
Smith Exactly.
Clark And I don’t think we see that for the onset yet again. But everybody seems to be doing a little bit better so that's encouraging.
Smith And I notice being polite on the road helps too, when I see a plate…
Clark Somebody's like…
Smith Oh they don’t know what it’s like.. it’s like me coming here. But when I see other plates I tend to just for the city … you know back off and let them cut or get in front if they need to. You just show a little courtesy and like we're friendly here.
Clark Yeah. [laughter]
Smith And any significant majority of ethnic groups who visit our area, or a different kind, that you see more than others?
Clark We don’t really, I mean we don’t keep track of lot of that. I mean we see everyone from young couples up to senior citizens that travel with us.
Smith So a whole mix?
Clark We'll see more of the over 55 group after Labor Day because it tends to be they wait until a lot of kids are back in school and then they travel while the weather is still nice but it's still -- it's quieter and a little more relaxed. For as right now most of our guest are really really busy, they're all going to Pikes Peak and white water rafting. And really busy during the day whereas in the fall, people are a little more leisurely timed. They don’t have to see everything in one day.
Smith Yes. Well they have maybe more time too. They spend more time. How long would you say it takes to see everything there is to see in Colorado Springs?
Clark Oh gosh I know if you were to say everything, it'd take you two weeks. But from all the attractions, museums, from the Figure Skating Hall of Fame to the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. I always encourage people to go over and take a look at the Broadmoor and walk around the lake and just sort of see as much as they can. And we try and gauge [inaudible]. We try and engage them to find out what it is they like to do because everyone's tastes are different. Some may want to go to the zoo, others may want to go the Fine Arts Center. Sometimes they might want to do both of those things. And they want to go for a hike or they want to go to the Pioneers Museum or they just want to go and shop and go to nice restaurants. And so the benefit I think of having a B&B is that you can really get to know your guest. And kind of get the individual taste of where they want to go to dinner and what they want to spend. How dressed up they want to get.
Smith Right. And you have all the menus from all too.
Clark Right.
Smith And is Colorado Springs in the TV ads, radio ads?
Clark Yeah. Colorado Springs Convention Visitors Bureau I was just recently, just today, was appointed to the board to represent El Paso County. They do an extensive marketing campaign.
Smith I don’t see a commercial on TV.
Clark I'm not sure that they're doing much here. Most of their focus is out of state. Having a website is important, having those visitor guides, they print about 700,000 visitor guides every year. And send those out first class. And as an example, I was trying to remember it was in the report today, I think was it… it was last week. They sent out like 1,200 guides in one week. And those flew out first class. So that's a lot of money, I mean that's a lot of mailing. And then of course we keep guides here and a lot of the hotels give them out. So it's really important, I mean people want the internet but I'm surprised at a number of people that still want something printed in their hand or they want you to mail it to them. So we answer leads through the Visitor's Bureau every week. And most of the time that they leave an email, I'll go ahead and just email them and ask them if they want a brochure because sometimes I don’t want to just be sending out hundreds of brochures. And not knowing if they really want one or not. And then they have to email me back and then I'll go ahead and mail the brochures.
Smith And that makes sense.
Clark Yeah.
Smith That's wise. And you think all those computer technology -- by the way your website is lovely. I love the virtual tour. That was awesome! That's beautiful.
Clark Well and we redid that just last year and I think it's made a considerable difference in our bookings. And we just received, the day before yesterday, an award from Arrington's Inn Traveler Magazine as being one of the best Bed and Breakfast in the nation for anniversary honeymoon. For the second year in a row, we got the award. And they were actually nominations sent in by our guests. So that constitutes above the top 3% of Bed and Breakfasts in the United States and Canada. So I just I think it's really important to keep your stuff up to date. We change our packages real frequently. I go and update them on a regular basis, so stuff doesn’t get old. And people go and they oh well this package looks from like 1999. What are they doing on here! So you have to really keep up with it.
Smith Okay.
Clark But the web is the newest instant brochure, instant pictures. More detailed pictures than you can get in a print brochure. And so being able to make a reservation online without ever having to pick up your telephone. We're sort of lazy travelers I guess. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t because by the time somebody emails me, I could’ve picked up the phone and booked someone else in that room. And so there's a lapse time in between. But people sometimes don’t -- they want the personal contact when they get here. But it's really a little scary for them to even call the telephone number.
Smith How about the travel agents?
Clark We get very little travel agent bookings. I just don’t think they're used to dealing with Bed and Breakfasts. In general, I mean we'll take travel agent bookings but we don’t get too many of them. They’re used to booking several different places and just canceling the reservations if the guest, or client doesn’t want them. And we don’t encourage that because we're so limited on number of rooms. But if we hold one room, it could be the last room we have and then turn people away and then they cancel the reservations. So we're very careful about how we book those. But not -- I mean we get some travel agents. We're getting more business people as well. We're looking to put in, well probably in the next couple days, wireless internet. We have high speed for me but the guests don’t have it yet. And so we're -- rather than to rewire the whole house, we're just going to put in a wireless system. So that they can access that, they have dial up in their rooms but a lot of more people are going to wireless. So things that we didn’t have when we first opened like TVs, telephones, we have DVD players, we have CD players in the rooms. We have refrigerators in every room. Fluffy robes, triple sheeting which is the upper end kind of bedding. Those kind of things that we didn’t have when we first opened. So I think there is certainly a little change in the level of our service to meet the demands of the guests that stay with us. And that makes a big difference I think and your guest satisfaction.
Smith I agree. Okay, the other positions that you have -- when I did some research on the news finder with Pikes Peak Library, it mentions that you're our county commissioner for District 3 and you're a city council member or were.
Clark I was.
Smith You were on the utilities board?
Clark Correct.
Smith 1994 you served on the state's Tourism Board as Chairman of Finance?
Clark We had no money but it was a really easy job.
Smith All right.
Clark There's a very small pot of money because there was not much there.
Smith And then you were on the Innkeepers Association. You founded that!
Clark I served on the board for seven years.
Smith And then founded the Holden House Inn? Did I get about everything?
Clark I think so. I think -- I serve on a lot of other, I've done a lot of other things like… I’m co-chair of the Go Red for Woman campaign for heart disease in women with the Heart Association right now. The second year in a row I’ve co-chaired that. And I serve on several other boards and I'm liaison as a County Commissioner to many other departments. So for instance, I'm liaison to the Health Department to the Emergency Services Agency Board to Department of Human Services. I deal with a lot of times, a lot of constituent issues with food stamps. And things like when somebody can't get their utilities turned on or needs help with a leak. So I deal with a lot of social services issues. I'm liaison to 911 Authority. I tend to focus on emergency services, health issues, tourism. So things that I feel certainly sort of a passion towards. I’m vice chair of the commission. There's five commissioners and there's a chairman and a vice chair. So when the chairman is not there then I serve as the chair.
Smith So you have a busy busy, busy busy.
Clark Yeah I'm on the RTA Oversight Committee. The Rural Transportation Authorities. And on that board as well. So there is a lot of things that I do that even if we don’t have meetings like we’re down to Thursday meetings only now, I'm just incredibly busy doing that. And then I just -- I don’t know, I have the best few jobs I could possibly have.
Smith When does your day start?
Clark I usually get up between 6:30 and 7 everyday. No matter whether it's Monday or Sunday it doesn’t matter. And depending on the day and how my day is scheduled, I try and be here as much as I can for breakfast. I'm not always here but I try and see my guests in the morning if possible. Or in the evening if I'm here in the evenings. And then I have really excellent assistant innkeepers who work for me that are just marvelous with our guests. And so I feel very comfortable with that.
Smith When do you wind down?
Clark 10 o'clock usually, 10 or 10:30. And I'm answering emails during the day whether it's the county commissioner. I have to be quite a multitasker because one minute I'm taking a reservation and the next I'm answering a constituent issue on the planning issue or something. It's kind of like back and forth, I’ve still got to do my sales tax reports for tomorrow so I've got to get those done and keep up with that. And Tiffany who works for us helps me with the income but I still have to do the check posting and all of the bill paying and all that. So I've got an accountant that does that.
Smith That's a lot. I read also you ran for mayor?
Clark I did twice and didn’t succeed either time. And so I'm done for mayor for a while.
Smith When was the year?
Clark 1999. And then I ran again. I was elected to City Council in 2001. And then in 2003, the mayor's seat came up again and it was term limited. Mary Lou Makepeace was term limited. And four…let’s see one…there were four of us from City Council who ran for mayor. There was Jim Null, Ted Eastburn, Lionel Rivera and myself and Lionel ended up winning. But due to that, it gave me an opportunity to run for County Commissioner. So I'll be there I hope for eight years. Because that will be, I’ll be term limited. I just I really love my job as Commissioner, they make a good salary, Commissioner pays very well compared to City Council. So I think I got the better job.
Smith You got the better one, okay.
Clark It just took me a while to get there. And I don’t think I’ll run for Mayor for a while.
Smith I think so. Okay, that's from the kind on the back burner, right?
Clark Give me eight years and then I'll think about again.
Smith Okay, all right! How do you think your career compares to other cities?
Clark In terms of?
Smith In a typical day, all what you're doing would you want to do it in a different city? Do you think you'd have it easier, harder… [audio stops] [00:47:22]
Clark Yeah I'm sure if I was like in Victor, Colorado or in Teller County it would be a lot different than running El Paso County.
Smith Right, it’s much smaller. I read about that you want to try to protect homebuyers from the meth Labs, I read that.
Clark Well I worked with the Health Department before I was a County Commissioner with CONO, with Council of Neighbors Organizations. And we supported meth lab legislations to get some standards for Meth Lab clean ups. There was a young lady who had moved in to a home that had had a meth lab in it, she didn’t know it when she bought it. And it was her first home, it was a HUD home and when she got in they started getting sick. And she found out from her neighbors that it had been a meth lab in the house and it had been raided and never disclosed to her. And so she ended up losing most everything, she recently got a settlement from HUD and got a lot of her money back and was able to purchase another house from what I understand. But it was a terrible ordeal for her. And she wasn’t a rich person, it was the first home she’d ever bought. So it was a really unfortunate incident but through that she was able to help us with getting the legislation through the sub standards.
Smith It pretty much has to be demolished don’t they?
Clark Sometimes, it depends. The chemicals get in everything, they get in the walls and sometimes they have to tear out all the dry wall and be down to the bare beams and then rebuild everything. And sometimes they're so bad, they do have to be demolished. Because the chemicals just sink in and dry out.
Smith Well I'm glad you're doing that. I’m glad.
Clark So I feel very strongly about public safety and those kinds of things.
Smith Great. And did you have to overcome any obstacles in your life? In your career, in your positions, did you encounter any with prejudice or anything?
Clark No. I think one of the things that I look very young and so I've had people say to me, we didn’t vote you the mayor because we wanted somebody older. And I look like well how old do you think I am? And they're like well you're in your thirties, and I went no I'm 45 and they're like, you're 45? So I think I've always had looked kind of young and I don’t know whether that means young and inexperienced looking. I've had to overcome shyness in myself. And I love public speaking, it's sometimes easier for me to speak to a group of a thousand people than it is for me to speak one on one. But I think I do it pretty well. I’ve sort of overcome that a lot. But I think that when I first got involved in the fire station issue for instance, I was pretty naïve about how things operated at the city. And certainly learned a lot along the way and have learned a lot through the years that I served. I was off city council again, I mean I just one day decided in 1999 I don’t know what I was thinking. I called up my friend, Margaret Radford who was a councilwoman and said hey and (she wasn’t a councilwoman at that time), she was working on the Rock Island Trail and the Constitution widening and cut through issue. And I said I've decided to run for mayor and she went okay I'll help you. And the next thing we knew we were both embroiled in politics. And never either one of us ever thought that at that point that we would ever be running for -- helping me run for mayor and then both running for city council and getting elected together which is really nice. And then I ran and lost again for mayor and ended up off Council and she was still on then, she ran for county commissioner when I ran and she lost, but she kept her council seat and then had to run again for city council. So it was just kind of like -- I mean I'm not saying it was easy but I think that it certainly established a sure character in some way. And I think it's important for young women to not be afraid and I hope that I can serve as some sort of a role model to say don’t give up. It's not easy to do anything, no matter what you're doing. I was a tennis player when I was younger and played in school on the varsity team. And so I really I think established a lot -- that was a lot of character building. You didn’t win every tournament, I played doubles so if I screwed up, my partner could blame me. And if my partner screwed up it was her fault. And learning to do teamwork, I mean I think that it's really important to stick with stuff and not just give up and go away and be mad and give up. It's just not meant to be sometimes in that particular way. And I think my faith and the fact that I believe strongly that fate comes in to play sometimes and it's just not meant to be. And so something else, the minute you've set that aside and say okay done with this. Something else comes along that's even better than what you thought, than what you originally thought your goal was. You’ve got to be adaptable.
Smith Is that something you’d probably say to someone like 100 years from now? If they were reading in the book, if the historical society goes to make that book, would you say something like that to someone 100 years from now?
Clark Oh yeah. I think that you have to keep trying and you try and instill in your children and… we don’t have kids but my parents always said whatever you put your mind to do, you can do. And don’t be afraid of trying and failing. Because it's okay to fail because then you figure out how to do it better the next time. And you come back and unfortunately I didn’t do it better the second time I ran for mayor. [laughter] Probably I shouldn’t have run for mayor but if I hadn’t run for mayor, I'd probably wouldn’t be on the county commission.
Smith There you go exactly, experience. So your mentors in your life are it… sounds like your parents?
Clark Yeah. My mom and dad I think were big mentors for me.
Smith Any other -- another woman that has inspired you that's non-family? Any famous or maybe not famous?
Clark I really didn’t.
Smith Or a man?
Clark Yeah. I really don’t think I had any like movie star role models or anything like that. I think I was more kind of a down home kind of girl and saw my dad work really hard for his community. And my mom worked really hard for her community. And I really think that they were major players and role models in my life. I certainly respect those that have been in government and have been able to succeed despite obstacles. And I really admire Laura Bush greatly, I admire Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Cheney with that too. But Laura to me is just an amazing role model for young women. As First Lady she has so much class and just so much compassion and genuine caring. And I also think that she just really instills confidence in women. That it's okay to be feminine and still be strong. And there's a balance there between knowing how far to be strong without coming across as your whining or your -- I won't use the word. [laughter] The b word but that -- I mean that that can happen. And people think if you're feminine, you can't necessarily be strong. Very strong women, Mrs. Dole as well, Elizabeth Dole I think in a political realm has always been very strong, very smart, ran the Red Cross, she was Secretary of State I think she was at one time. And now as a senator and just always dressed beautifully, always speaks very well. Our Lieutenant Governor is a good example of that. Jane Norton has been an extremely good role model for women to say you can get to the top, that's it's okay for women to… here in El Paso County we haven’t done a very good job mentoring our women to succeed up into politics. And that's -- we have Lynn Hefley and that's it. I mean she's the one person in our female delegation here at our state level that is an elected official, as a state representative. And not that there… maybe there aren’t women that had really cared to run, I don’t know or maybe it's just too scary to run.
Smith That could be, yes.
Clark Because it gets pretty personal sometimes. And you're accused of all kinds of things you didn’t do. And or they turn everything around, something that you did and you're like that's not what happened! That's not true! And your husband wants to go beat them up and you're like no honey, you can't do that!
Smith Not that route, right?
Clark Yeah. That would really get us on the front page of the paper.
Smith There you go. And not where you want to be in for that.
Clark No!
Smith And the best time in your life in Colorado Springs or elsewhere? The best time you've had?
Clark Oh. I am sort of a cup is always half full kind of person and I always try and look for the good parts in people. I mean I loved opening the Bed and Breakfast in 1986 and I still love it today. And I think that's a key to survivability. And I think part of that is because I have really energetic staff people, the innkeepers that work for me…instill loyalty and instill quality and have the enthusiasm for the inn that brings more enthusiasm to me. So that you don’t get burned out.
Smith And was there ever a worse time in your life? Were you sad, depressed?
Clark I think it was hard when I was a Navy wife and I got married and a month later my husband left for six months. And I was -- we were in Coronado which was a lovely place to be but it was challenging because I never lived away from home. So my parents at least were only a couple of hours away. But it's like hi honey, love you, bye! And I know that there are so many young military families that are going through the same thing right now. And so I certainly have an appreciation for our military. Not just the service people that leave but the families that are left behind and that's a real challenge.
Smith Yeah, very hard.
Clark And so many wives who had babies when their husbands were gone and the husband wasn’t there to hold your hand and watch you scream. But I think that was hard. That was a big growing up lesson for me. But it was also an opportunity, I found a job and started a practice with the doctor who had faith in me that I was 20 years old and could still organize her office. And she had faith in me and she was a great role model too.
Smith What was her name?
Clark Dr. Herbst, Laurel Herbst. And she is the Director of the San Diego Hospice. And at the time, I helped her to open her first office and was her only employee when we started. And now she doesn’t have her private practice anymore, she's just working for hospice. But she was a great businesswoman and very organized, very over achiever and maybe that's where I get some of my drive to just go wild because she was like that, she was nuclear powered. And she just would go and go and go. [laughter]
Smith I like that term.
Clark She just went and went and went. And it was great. We had an all female office and working for a female doctor was great and she was an incredible role model for me too. The women who can succeed in business and still have their compassionate side. She was a wonderful doctor dealing with cancer patients. And very intelligent.
Smith Do you still communicate with her from time to time?
Clark A little bit, we usually exchange Christmas cards. I've been to San Diego and visited her and seen her again and she says to me all the time, every time I see her she's like so are you sure you don’t want to move back to San Diego and need a job? And I'm like no, I'm pretty well settled. She's like well you could come back anytime. And like no, no that's okay Laurel.
Smith And your proudest achievements, sounds like many of them?
Clark Yeah. The most memorable, I wouldn’t say that it was an achievement but the most memorable moment I think in my life will probably be the speech that I gave at the Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial in the year after 9/11. In 2002, in September 2002, I gave a speech to 10,000 people at Memorial Park after 9/11. And it's the one moment that I will probably I'll never forget it, probably because it was so fresh in all of our minds. But first of all having a personal affinity towards firefighters and my fire station, and then succeeding and running for mayor and the firefighters supported me for mayor the first time when I lost. And then supported me when I ran and succeeded for council and then being asked to give a speech about momentous occasion among all men who were the IFF guys from International Association of Fire Fighters… are all men. And so you had the… fire chief spoke and Mike McNeil spoke and Harold Schaitberger and Congressman Heffley. And I was the only female to speak to the families. And so it was quite emotional.
Smith Were you scared?
Clark I was -- no, I was afraid I was going to break down in tears. And Margaret Radford helped me write the speech, she's an incredible journalist and wrote for the Gazette. And she’s not just councilwoman but she's an amazing writer and she and I worked on the speech together and used excerpts from America the Beautiful. At the setting at Memorial Park and the cameras were looking back at the peak and it was a clear day. And it was just really an amazing opportunity.
Smith I think my brother in law went there, he's a firefighter.
Clark And I didn’t want to give the same old government speech. I wanted to do something very special and I think that's the way it came across. That we cared about them as people, not just…. I didn’t want to get political that day. And I think we succeeded. And as Margaret was sitting out in the audience and my parents were sitting in the front row, it was just a perfect day. I mean it was -- I'm sorry that it had to be. 434 firefighters died that year. But that's probably -- I don’t think there's any memory that will… at least I don’t think so. I hope not in that type of a venue. I mean there were other speeches that I give that will be memorable. I don’t think there's ever one that will top the…just the ability to reach out to families and say it's okay we understand, we’re here for you.
Smith That's nice.
Clark And in fact the next morning, parts of my speech ran in front of the Denver Post and I was just like I don’t believe this.
Smith Oh that's great! I might have to look that up, on the news for the Denver paper. It sounds like that was maybe your proudest achievement as well?
Clark Yeah. And again I don’t know that that was an achievement. It was just a memorable part of my life and very grateful to be given the opportunity by IFF to have faith in me, to allow me to step out on to a stage on that kind of an occasion. Because you would have thought here I was a council member, although it was my council district, I was not the mayor. And they asked me.
Smith Very nice. Your plans for the future?
Clark I don’t know. Just to do my job and try and juggle everything successfully. And I mean I have a lot of strategic things I want to do for the county. And I have so many plans and probably not enough time.
Smith Not enough time, we need 25 hours right?
Clark Yeah.
Smith And so you will stay in Colorado Springs?
Clark Yeah.
Smith And no plans to move back? Okay.
Clark I'll be an innkeeper until I really am old and gray.
Smith Nothing wrong with that.
Clark Is your inn for sale? We hear it all the time, we hear the rumor but it's not us though. Unless someone comes along with the right offer, I'm not moving.
Smith Is there anything in Colorado Springs you would change? One thing stands out?
Clark I think that I would like to see our -- the people who live here understand that government really tries to operate as efficiently as possible. And that we try to do more with less all the time. But then there's a point where you can only do less with less. And we have to make sure that people understand that for what you give, what you get back. Certainly to support the organizations that are not governmentally funded. And to just remember that quality of life is about more than just roads and bridges, it's about caring about people, it's about having open space, it's about having a safe place to live. Whether that means fire and police or sheriff's department and those that put their lives on the line for us. I think that's the one thing. And sometimes the mentality or not necessarily the mentality but the philosophy of some of our -- of the citizens is that they don’t want government at all. And I think that the government really tries hard to make it work. Regardless of whether you're Democrat or Republican, we all think we're doing the right thing. And sometimes you're on the majority and sometimes you're on the minority. It just depends on the day that you vote. But I think we're all trying to do our best and thinking about how to have a brighter future. I really think that -- again I'm one of those person, that people that when confronted with a bunch of lemons, I make lemonade. I just feel like -- not that I don’t like to make lemonade anyway because it's kind of what I do. Lemonade and cookies are always good. But I just think that sometimes we get so wrapped up in ourselves, we don’t think about the great things that our community has here to offer. And we wouldn’t have Red Rock Canyon today if it weren’t for the fact that many people worked. First of all, I'm just wanting to have that as open space, it started with that. And many things happened along the way. That if one thing had gone wrong, the whole thing would have fallen apart. But to me it's encouraging that the voter's decided that they wanted to extend our open space tax in order to pay for things like that. But they see a value beyond -- we want to get from point A to point B but if point B isn't something that you want to go to, what's the point of building the road?
Smith True, that's true.
Clark That's frustrating to me sometimes. Or when I hear -- I've had people call me on the phone and say that all politicians are just corrupt and lining their pockets with the dollars of the taxpayers. And I'm like look my pockets aren’t real lined right now and be careful about over generalizing. Certainly there are bad politicians and there are also just bad people in the world that end up in the criminal justice center. And I'm sorry about that but there's a lot of good people too. And don’t over generalize that we're all that way. And I think that Colorado Springs sometimes gets a reputation one way or the other. I don’t see that our community is not diverse at all. I think that we are very diverse. I think that we have great religious organizations, we have great arts organizations, we have so many benefits. And there are good developers. There are developers that want to -- they see a vision and look at the Extreme Makeover house and that whole story. I mean those are things that -- there was a young man who fell at Garden of the Gods and I can’t think of Jeremy’s last name, but he was paralyzed. And the House and the Building Association rebuilt his house so he could have access to a handicapped area and be able to get around his home. And so I think that there are stories where we sort of over generalize things. And we have to be careful to remember there's -- don’t think that everybody is that way just because you think of…
Smith One person.
Clark Yeah.
Smith Right.
Clark Yeah. So that makes me kind of angry sometimes.
Smith Okay. And what's the greatest thing in Colorado Springs? It kind of like you might just already said it too.
Clark No, I think that it is the fact that we -- I think we have an extremely diverse community. Because we have Colorado College and the Air Force Academy. We have good community colleges, we have UCCS or whatever it's called now, CU Springs? I can never remember that. And then we have like I said arts organizations, different -- a great tourism industry, great attractions for people to come and visit, wonderful city, county parks, places for kids to play, ball fields. You know whether it's a ball field, El Pomar and the Sports Center and we’ve got great non-profit organizations to support us here in this area. We have a lot to be grateful for and we have a lot of improvements still to make. So I'm going to busy for the next at least eight years.
Smith Okay. And what would you say to somebody moving out here or wanting to visit Colorado Springs, what would you say to them if they wanted to move out here?
Clark Well I think I would say that we have a lot of choices when it comes to where you want to live. Whether you want to live in the country, in the city, whether you're into historic preservation which is sort of our side of town here. I I love to see people move in to the west side and taking an old, run down Victorian and decide that they want to love it back to life again. And I've always felt that houses somehow, the old saying if walls could talk, maybe we wouldn’t want to hear it, I don’t know! But I've always felt that if Isabelle Holden could look down on this house today, having built this house in 1902, she would be smiling saying thank you for taking care of my house. I've always felt that houses had personalities of some sort, that there was a life in them. And when they get neglected, they just need a little bit of love.
Smith There you go.
Clark And I think that there is… places that you could move that are more in the mountains and I love my district which is primarily the western part of the city and county. And so I love Chipeta Park and Green Mountain Falls and sleepy little towns and Manitou for its incredible sort of wackiness. But they have, Manitou has a spirit all of its own, it's different from Old Colorado City, it's different from Colorado Springs. And you know that's not a bad thing. It just makes Manitou… Manitou, it's a little quirky.
Smith There you go. So Elizabeth Holden owned the house?
Clark Isabel.
Smith Oh Isabel, Isabel Holden. Had it built in 1902?
Clark First she, then her children. They originally had a ranch out on Bijou Basin which is at the southern tip of Black Forest.
Smith Oh okay.
Clark And the Holden Ranch is still out there. It's a beautiful farm house. And she and Daniel lived out there on the plains. Well it's sort of rolling hills and some pine trees close by but it's very pretty. And they built the house and were ranchers and then Isabelle -- Daniel died in 1896, there was a cholera epidemic and he died of cholera. And so then she decided to move to town and build a home for her six children. And many of the Holden family members are still on the west side. Some are buried at -- not Fairview but in the Manitou Springs Cemetery. Isabel and Daniel are buried at Evergreen and they have a fairly large monument built. And they came out from Iowa in 1854.
Smith Wow, that's interesting. When you renovated, did you find any artifacts?
Clark We found some old newspapers, I don’t think I kept them, they were within one of the floors and as insulation in one of our bathrooms. And they were dated to like 1946, they were Gazette from 1946.
Smith Wow!
Clark The fashions of the day were great.
Smith Quite a bit different.
Clark Yeah.
Smith Wow, that's interesting.
Clark But we really didn’t find, we didn’t find a whole lot of real artifacts. The house had been vacant for seven years. So pretty much everything had been removed out of the house.
Smith Okay.
Clark There wasn’t much left.
Smith Okay. Do you have any more history on Isabel or can it be found on the internet maybe?
Clark I have just kind of what’s in my brochure. I don’t really have a whole lot on her except the little bit of history I got. But they were fairly prominent in the area. He was at one time the president, I believe it was the Colorado Springs Exchange Bank, the Mining Exchange Bank.
Smith Oh yeah. Okay.
Clark They owned a lot of mining interests in various Colorado towns. And that's how we named our guest rooms. So we have like Silverton and Gold Field and Aspen, Cripple Creek and Independence which all were mining towns or mines that they owned interest in. So we tried to carry through with the historical theme.
Smith Beautiful. All right, I thank you very much.
Clark All right.
[00:76:46]
[AUDIO ENDS]

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Oral History Interview
with
Sallie Clark
Interview by
Deborah Smith
19 July 2005
CSHP 0007
Colorado Springs History Project
CSHP
Pikes Peak Library District, Special Collections
Copyright 2015
Colorado Springs History Project
The Colorado Springs History Project was conducted between the years 2005-2010 in a joint effort to document and update the history of Colorado Springs from mid-20th century to 2010. This volunteer team included members from the region’s major academic libraries and faculties, as well as the Pikes Peak Library District and the Pioneers Museum. Administered and supervised by the Colorado Springs History Project Committee, the project interviewers consisted of a number of local volunteers.
The oral history portion of The Colorado Springs History Project identified and interviewed individuals who had helped to shape the city of Colorado Springs in various and diverse ways. Subjects were also sought as representative of inhabitants of the Pikes Peak region and could provide insight into the city’s story in the second half of the twentieth century. Interviews reflect the rapid growth of Colorado Springs from the post-World War II era to the early part of the twenty first century. Interviews touch on business and government relations, religious organizations, various non-profits, the Air Force Academy, Colorado College, key local businesses, and the growth of many important charitable services within the community. Several interviews touch on education in Colorado Springs, highlighting both secondary and post-secondary educational institutions.
The collection is comprised of 50 tapes, 19 CDs, and 2 DVDs with 32 individual interviews. These interviews are housed in the archives of Pikes Peak Library District’s Special Collections. A complete listing of the interviews is available at the Special Collections reference desk. Transcripts for many of the interviews are available for use.
Digitization
Audio from the Colorado Springs History Project was digitized between 2009 - 2011 and is available for study and use in the Special Collections department.
The Colorado Springs Oral History Project
Sallie Clark
Oral History Interview
CSHP 0007
Deborah Smith
19 July 2005
Colorado Springs, Colorado
[AUDIO BEGINS]
Smith Smith to Tape 1 of an oral history interview with Sallie Clark in her home her business Holden House 1902 Bed and Breakfast and that's at 1102 West Pikes Peak Avenue in Colorado Springs. Today is July 19th, 2005. And we're meeting at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Okay, all right some of the questions we'd like to go over with you is when and where were you born?
Clark I was born in Long Beach, California.
Smith Long Beach, California. And what do you remember about your parents?
Clark Well I remember a lot, they're still alive.
Smith They're still alive, okay.
Clark They're still together.
Smith All right, what are their names?
Clark Barbara and Tom Blackman.
Smith Barbara and Tom.
Clark B-L-A-C-K-M-A-N. My dad is a school teacher. He was first a junior high teacher and then taught high school for a number of years. He grew up in Pueblo, Colorado.
Smith He grew up in Pueblo, okay.
Clark He graduated from UNC at Greeley.
Smith Oh! And then he went to California?
Clark He went to California to get a job because teachers got paid more there which they still do. [laughter]
Smith Yes, that's probably true.
Clark And then he came back to get his masters here and then moved back. Yeah, and met my mom there and married her so.
Smith Met your mom met back in?
Clark In California.
Smith Okay, all right. And -- well you just answered. Well where did they come from originally?
Clark My mom was from Pasadena, California. My dad was from Pueblo, Colorado.
Smith Okay.
Clark Yeah.
Smith Is this one Muffin?
Clark That's Muffin and the black one’s Mingtoy and usually they're not both out at the same time. So I don’t know, they're just curious about you, yeah.
Smith And your grandparents, where they come from?
Clark I had -- one of my grandmothers was actually from Wales and came over here when she was three years old. And my grandfather on my dad's side, he was from Canada. And they settled in Pueblo, Colorado and had a farm there. On my mom's side, my Nana was from California and was born, I believe, in Long Beach. And she was a seamstress and then my grandfather, I don’t remember, I mean I remember him but he was pretty much retired when I was growing up on my mom's side.
Smith Are any of these pictures, are they your Grandad?
Clark This is my great grandmother and grandfather from Wales.
Smith Oh, wow!
Clark My paternal grandparents.
Smith That's very interesting. And in childhood, any special memories you remember? Anything that stands out?
Clark I grew up… I was very fortunate, I grew up in a really good family and we weren’t wealthy. My dad was a school teacher, my mom worked in camera stores. She did photography inside and worked in a camera store for her aunt for a long time. And I have two brothers and a sister and… but I was the baby of the family so my sister and I are seven years apart. So I was kind of the late child and ended up being home when a lot of the kids were already gone and off on their own. So it was kind of sometimes like being an only child after you know, as I was growing up. But had really good parents, good role models. My dad was involved in local politics and ended up being Mayor and City Council member of Seal Beach, California. And my mom was very involved in Republican women and many volunteer causes. She was always volunteering for something. And our church. I’m a Methodist and was very involved in our little church in Seal Beach. So I was one of those kids that didn’t have a difficult… I mean you know we weren’t rich but we got along but fine.
Smith Okay. What did you want to be when you grew up?
Clark Actually, first I want to be a teacher and then I wanted to be a nurse. And I actually had a little school room, my dad built a little shed in the back and all the kids had to come to school in the summer time. So I was the teacher then. And then I guess that was the beginning of my leadership skills, I don’t know. And then I -- my brother went away to Vietnam and I always had this desire to want to help others. And you know I had this sort of dream when I was a little girl that I could be a nurse and go into the Army and go take care of my brother in Vietnam. And so that didn’t happen but I ended up in the nursing profession working for a cancer specialist.
Smith This sounds like the nursing and the Vietnam War, doesn’t it sound like MASH? I loved the whole series.
Clark It was just kind of the -- I think it was the time, that I wanted to help my brother and he had gone into the Army and he came back thankfully. He was a Vietnam vet. And I just have always been kind of a service oriented person. So when I met and married my husband we lived in San Diego for about five years when he was in the Navy. And then we decided he was going to get out of the Navy and we moved to Colorado Springs. So we'd spent our honeymoon here, my Grandmother lived in Pueblo and I'd spend every summer in Colorado. So we decided to move here and wanted a change in my sort of career. At the time I was getting a little burned out on cancer patients and dealing with the death and the dying issues. And so came here and started the bed and breakfast in 1986, we bought the house in '85.
Smith And I was looking through the renovation, it's impressive. And while you’ve already answered the question on how your family earned an income. Any unique family traditions that carries on down to you?
Clark I would say my mom is the perpetual party person in the way that she likes to hold family gatherings, not parties, those kind of parties. But she really does care a lot about family and birthday parties and anniversaries and those kinds of things. She was one of those entertainment people that could you know plan a party for 100 people in 24 hours. I mean she's just the kind of person that can throw that, pull that together pretty easily.
Smith Wow!
Clark She loves entertaining, she loves to cook and she's a great housekeeper, good decorator. I think I got a lot of my -- my sister's very meticulous. And so I think I just sort of absorbed a lot of that while I was growing up. So this was sort of a perfect fit for that.
Smith Okay. And -- you’ve already answered on prominent people in your family or just kind of an average family. Your father was the Mayor in Pueblo.
Clark No, he was the Mayor of Seal Beach, California.
Smith Oh that's right. Any other prominent people?
Clark No, not really. I mean my family was pretty average I think in terms of my growing up. But he was probably the biggest influence in terms of politics but I never expected to get involved in politics. We were just expected as kids to pull our weight and do our chores and my mom and dad really encouraged independence and trusted me. When I was younger, I started working when I was like sixteen at Marie Callenders as a hostess and then worked my way up to waitressing and did that for a lot of years while I was going to school. And that really kind of I think brought out my personality because I was very shy at the time, and was kind of afraid of people. So..
Smith That's part of coping. [laughter]
Clark I know. But I think you find a lot of people in public service that are like that. I was talking to, the other night, Miss California, the Rodeo Queen and she said she was extremely shy and she kind of became a rodeo queen and became Miss California Rodeo. And the one thing that she learned was public speaking and being able to deal with crowds and people. No I think that you develop -- my parents never pushed me, they just sort of said, whatever a level you feel comfortable, get out there and do it and I did it. [laughter]
Smith Very good. And you went to school also in California?
Clark I did. I graduated in Huntington Beach High School. And then I went Bryman College in Long Beach. And also did study at Golden West College.
Smith Okay. And what was your favorite subject?
Clark I think certainly when I was in high school, I think it was English and writing and I was never big on math, the sciences. I was more of an English and liked sort of the softer subjects I think. I've loved history, I always have loved history and those kinds of things. I’d take those kinds of classes, literature.
Smith And what were your college years like? Easy?
Clark You know, I studied in more of a… concentrated on my Nursing. So it was just basically focused on that. And I lived at home and I didn’t participate a lot in a lot of the school activities other than just my studies.
Smith Okay. And at that time did you have any focus on what you might be later on in life, your career goals, did you -- was it Nursing?
Clark Pretty much. I really liked taking care of people, the service industry. Starting out doing the restaurant business and then working in the nursing section segment of my life. And then I was just kind of ready for a change. And my husband and I had loved traveling to bed and breakfasts and we just kind of thought this would be something that would be fun. So we did about three and a half years of research and then opened the Bed and Breakfast in 1985. We bought the house in '85 and opened in '86.
Smith That was quick.
Clark It was fast.
Smith Was the Marie Callenders, that's a restaurant?
Clark That's a restaurant.
Smith Okay. They make nice pies.
Clark They make really good pies. [laughter]
Smith That's how I did it.
Clark And my -- yeah, my hips showed it after a while when trying to get into those uniforms.
Smith [laughter] Okay, so you moved here in 1985 in Colorado Springs. Based on being here in the summer time and…
Clark Loved Colorado Springs, loved Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, all of the things to do and see here. We felt that Colorado Springs had really good tourism base and so it was a good location plus it had enough job opportunities for my husband. When he got out of the Navy, he got a job here initially for Kaman Sciences and worked for Kaman for a long time. And it was bought out by ITT and then he recently changed jobs a couple of years ago.
Smith Okay. Where is he working now?
Clark He works at L3 Communications. But he works at Schreiver Air Force Base.
Smith Okay. My husband goes back and forth there too.
Clark It’s a ways to go.
Smith Yeah it is, it sure is.
Clark I mean an hour drive.
Smith Yeah.
Clark One way.
Smith That's true. And how would you characterize the community and how it's changed since you first came here?
Clark Well I think it was certainly a much smaller community when we moved here. Probably 180,000 I think and then it went up to about 220, it went down a little bit at a certain point in the 80's when there was a savings and loan scandals and things going on. And they were -- people were leaving town, they weren’t coming to town. I think there was certainly more of a focus on the natural beauty of Colorado Springs and kind of having that small town feel. And I see what's happened and it's not necessarily a bad thing but it certainly transitioned into more of a city environment where we've got a lot of growth going on North and East. This part of town…and one of the reasons we moved to Old Colorado City area was because we knew that growth wouldn’t happen around us, we knew what we were getting, we knew what you see is what you get. We wouldn’t be going to buy on a five acre parcel and then have everything build around us. As we knew that this was kind of in the center of the town, it was a good location. We've seen ups and downs in the tourism industry. But I think the good things about what I see in Colorado Springs is more of a growth towards the arts and culture. Which I think we've always done a good job with that but I think there is so much more focus on that now that it's really great. I think that there's certainly a very supportive military contingent here. And I think that the general public is very supportive of our military in the community. But it's not like being in a military town, it doesn’t feel like that. You don’t see people walking around in uniforms all the time. Whereas when you're in San Diego or ports where we were used to being -- you just commonly see uniforms. And you just don’t see that here, unless you're at a military function and then you do see them. So I think that's part of just the transition of Colorado Springs. A good focus on history, historical sites. I would like to see more of that historical preservation attitude. I think that we tend to have let's tear it down and build new instead of preserving certain buildings that we could. I work on several sort of historical projects and a little bit involved with Chadbourn Mission, which is down in the Confluence Park, now American Beautiful Park area, a little tiny mission down there, we're trying to get some funds for them. And the Fire Museum, the Lester Williams Fire Museum which is at the Fire Training Center and Operations Center. And where we've just had a building donated to us. It's old Fire Station 4, so that's another project I kind of work on.
Smith And you saved your fire station too, didn’t you?
Clark Yeah. I kind of got involved on that level first. And that's sort of how I got involved in local politics. And before that I was on the tourism board and have been very active with my husband in the bed and breakfast industry. We basically started the Bed and Breakfast Association in 1987 but before there was anything, any association.
Smith In Colorado?
Clark In Colorado, in the state. So we traveled around, we got people to sort of buy into it and now it's a fairly large organization. So that's nice.
Smith Yeah.
Clark I mean it's nice to see.
Smith Some people don’t want to walk into the Clarion.
Clark Right. And we saw a need for networking. You know I’m a big one for partnerships I think that we tend to get so territorial sometimes. And when business is bad you tend to get even more territorial because it's like it's my business and your business. Whereas if you kind of all work together as an industry, you can all partner together, utilize your money more efficiently to advertise yourself as a group and then everyone benefits not just you. Whereas if you try to make yourself an island, it's just too hard to compete sometimes. And when you're competing with the Marriott, it's better for you to be as a group and try and -- then the group can compete with the Marriot family. It's a little hard for the Holden House to do that.
Smith That is smart, yeah.
Clark Not that there is anything against Marriot. [laughter]
Smith No, no, that's true. [laughter] I understand where you're coming from. So the city when you moved out here was you said about 180,000 people.
Clark Yeah. Around 180, 189,000. Today it's around 380,000 probably. Probably pushing 400,000 in the city. And 500,000 in the county, if you include El Paso County.
Smith We are growing. When you moved here, the weather, did that put you off, scare you or anything?
Clark No, actually I love the snow but I love the summers here. I like the dry climate, I like the beautiful mountains and I love hiking and doing the outdoor activities. Of course I don’t get enough time to do that anymore but that's one of the reasons we moved here. Because we love the mountains, we liked being in the city and having the convenience of being right in the middle of town but being able to hop in your car and be in Cheyenne Canyon within ten minutes. And be on hiking trails where you barely see another person and it's just I mean I don’t know where you can live that you have that convenience of being able to be at the mall in ten minutes or be at a hiking trail in ten minutes.
Smith Right. That is true. Yeah, it's true, it is. Okay. And you answered my next question about outdoor activities…and when you get time, right? Times are short for you. And you mentioned you met your husband in California?
Clark Right.
Smith Okay.
Clark Very mutual through his relatives and my parents.
Smith His name is Welling?
Clark Welling.
Smith Okay. And he was in the Navy. And I read also that he brought back some oriental treasures for the decorations?
Clark Yeah we have. I mean we have a lot of things that he picked up in his travels overseas. Like these big pictures up here.
Smith That's what I thought, yeah.
Clark And then my grandmother had a lot of things that we've just sort of collected from her. And we sort of became the collectors of all the family heirlooms. So now people give them to us.
Smith Lucky for you. I read about that you had the tea service, the Welsh tea service?
Clark Right. I have my grandmother, my great grandmother's tea service and the Gaudy Welsh, which is in the cupboard. It dates back about 300 years. Through our family, it's in the corner cupboard. We’ll have to take a look at that.
Smith Sounds interesting. And some of your best friends in the area, can you list those?
Clark Well a lot of innkeepers that I have sort of grown up with I guess in our industry. It's kind of funny because we used to say in the bed and breakfast industry and one of my friends who opened the B&B down the street and she's since closed. But when I first told her, she's opening a B&B, I said you don’t have friends, you just have innkeepers because you have no time really to be -- the people that you would like to spend time with, you're just too busy running your business to spend time with them. But most of your close friends are innkeepers. In my case I have political friends too that… Margaret Radford who is a city councilwoman from Pat Fejedelem who runs our Hearts Inn. And we have a small group of bed and breakfasts called the Authentic Inn’s Group and we meet monthly and pool together our resources and do marketing ideas and those kinds of things. And so that's my innkeeping friends group. And then I have Jan Doran who works with CONO which Council of Neighbors and Organizations. And CONO is a neighborhood umbrella group that a lot of our neighborhood organizations belong to. And so then Organization West Side Neighbors which are a neighborhood group. I don’t have a lot of super close friends but I do have a lot of people that I'm in contact with everyday.
Smith Okay. And why are you interested in tourism? What is the big pull towards tourism?
Clark Well I think certainly because I'm in that business. In fact we had guests last -- well just a few days ago who said every question they asked me I have sort of an answer for them. And they're like are you just like a walking tourism kiosk or something? [laughter] I knew -- they said well what's special going on? And I said well you might want to go see the Jubilee exhibit over at the Fine Arts Center or the Garden of the Gods or you could go rafting and do the raft and rails. I just know a lot about tourism probably because I served on the Travel and Tourism Authority Board for seven years. After we lost our tourism tax because of the Tabor Amendment the voters turned down the tourism tax which was funding tourism at the tune of around 11 to 13 million dollars a year. Well we lost that completely in 1992 when Tabor passed. And so in 1993 there was no money for tourism at all. So we constantly made a new board called the Travel and Tourism Authority and I served on that particular board for seven years. And then the state came through and we changed the legislation and created the Colorado Tourism Office. Still not funded at the level where it needs to be. But tourism has continually had difficulty getting funding. So I've always been a tourism advocate. Because of the economic benefits, the sales tax revenue, it's a clean industry, it brings in people who come and stay and leave. They bring their money and then they go home. And they add estimates or they add 40% of your sales tax based on local economy without putting the burden on the infrastructure. So they come and go. But some decide to stay. [laughter]
Smith Some do.
Clark Some do. And that means we're doing our job I guess in selling our area that is such a wonderful place visit and live.
Smith It is. What's your favorite place in the whole world?
Clark Oh in the whole world?
Smith In the whole world.
Clark Gosh I don’t know, I think right here. I just I love the Pikes Peak region.
Smith And do you like traveling a lot?
Clark We don’t, we're not able to travel a whole lot. You know when you own a business like this you're pretty much, not that we're stuck but it's just very difficult to get away. Friends of ours who used to own a bed and breakfast in Crested Butte say our guests do everything we moved here to do. They moved to Crested Butte so they could ski and while their guest are out skiing they were cleaning room. I mean that's because that's just the nature of the business. Somebody’s got to do the work.
Smith Yes, exactly. Have you been outside the country at all?
Clark Yeah, we've been to a lot of things in British Columbia then to Scotland, England, Wales.
Smith Did you do any genealogy when you were there in Wales?
Clark No. We visited relatives. We do have relatives that we do know. They’ve been here and we’ve been there. So we sort of keep in touch with them.
Smith Okay. And other places in America other than in California and Colorado Springs, some of the places that you've visited?
Clark I've been to most of the western states. Certainly I grew up in California, I've been to almost every area in California. And then I've been to Oregon, certainly New Mexico, Arizona, Utah. And Colorado, I traveled that, Colorado. I've been to Kansas and Nebraska, not done a lot of sight seeing in those two states. We've been to Wyoming, Montana. So mostly western states. I've been to Washington DC on trips and Virginia and Maryland. My husband graduated from the Naval Academy. So every once in a while we go back there for the reunion, we try to take some time. We've been to Kentucky and Ohio.
Smith That's a lot of places. [laughter]
Clark I started thinking about it… It doesn’t seem like that I've been to that many places. Never been to New York, though.
Smith Never been to New York, okay. I could bet on that you can land it sometime. Upstate New York is pretty and my husband's from that side. A lot of ferries, I loved it. Okay and I saw your before and after book for the renovations there. And what do you think is the most successful attraction in Pikes Peak?
Clark You mean in this area?
Smith In this area.
Clark I would say Garden of the Gods, that's probably the top of the list and Pikes Peak itself. And those are probably the ones to draw people. And I certainly have a great appreciation for Katherine Lee Bates and America the Beautiful.
Smith Yes I do too.
Clark And I was very happy that the city named Confluence Park, America the Beautiful Park.
Smith She wasn’t going to get her quarters [inad]
Clark I never liked the name Confluence Park anyway. [laughter]
Smith And my teacher taught us that at Manitou Cliff Dwellings that that used to be or is a replica.
Clark Well they're not actually replicas. And I don’t know, one of my books I think it's Newport in the Rockies. It talks about how they moved the cliff dwellings from southwest Colorado, I don’t know if you're aware of that. They came from the Mesa Verde area and in fact at one point in the early 1900’s there was a lawsuit that took place in terms of when Mesa Verde National Park was established. There was the accusation that they'd been taken from the park. And then that never transpired. I had heard that they were not successful that they had apparently come from outside Mesa Verde National Park. But no one was actually quite sure I think. But they were dismantled stone by stone and brought and rebuilt here. But during that, it was during the early 1900’s before transportation was what it is today. So that more people could be able to see the cliff dwellings without having to go to Durango.
Smith Right, exactly.
Clark Cortez and the Four Corners area to see them.
Smith Right, that's quite a bit. Okay. And you already mentioned tourism, we're talking about tourism how it's changed and it's grown and it's slacked off a little bit and now it's back up again.
Clark It's starting to move in an appropriate direction. We’re about up about… so far about 20% this year over last year.
Smith That's good.
Clark About in June, I think we're about 100 rooms ahead of where we were the year before. So it kind of is good.
Smith Well I'm certainly one of those tourists back in … about 12 years ago, I was a tourist and I fell in love with the area.
Clark We spent our honeymoon here in 1980 and stayed with my grandmother and traveled around Colorado. My dad was a history teacher so I got a lot of influence from historical sites. Mesa Verde is one of my favorite parks to go to.
Smith That is beautiful.
Clark I love the desert; I mean I just like it. I like it as a change and I think the cliff dwellings are so interesting.
Smith That is right, that's beautiful. Remember back when General Palmer founded the city, he pushed for a health resort. Do we still do that a lot? Do we, say come and smell the waters of Manitou?
Clark Well I think Manitou has certainly worked to restore their mineral springs and make walking tours. I certainly think there is a resurgence of that in health spas. And when you look at the number of day spas around here, they're probably now ten around Colorado Avenue. And certainly the Broadmoor has done an amazing job and I know that Cheyenne Mountain Resort is going back towards resorts and individuals versus just conferences. They've been trying to get out of that just that they're just for conferences and trying to get people in there to use the golf courses and the facilities that are more spa related. I think there's a big and certainly a big demand for spas now.
Smith That was at the origin…that’s how I feel.
Clark It brings you around full circle if you think about that. Not too many people with tuberculosis these days.
Smith We don’t want them to come for that reason but it is a healthy place. And do you still feel that the Pikes Peak region is still charming as far as the western?
Clark Yeah. And I think that what impresses me most about this, as conservative as our area tends to be in terms of politics, we still support things like open space. And I think we do such a good job at non-profit support. Even though we don’t necessarily want that to come out of tax dollars but in terms of our parks, people have overwhelmingly approved the tax for parks. They appreciate public safety and they appreciate good transportation systems. And while we tend to be very anti-tax, we realize that there are important things that we would like to see and we don’t want every square inch of our land to be developed. We want to make sure that we have open spaces like Red Rock Canyon and section 16 in the Garden of the Gods. Open space areas where kids can play and see nature. Recently the county just opened Paint Mines Park which is out east by Calhan and it's a really little gem that you don’t even really know is there. And then you get out there and you see where the Indians, used clay to make color in their fabrics. And they would color their pots with it. It's like a clay and it's in layers and has different colors and it's really beautiful. It's called Paint Mines Park. It's out by Calhan out by where the county fair is actually going to be this coming week.
Smith That sounds nice. So these events like this new park where they got the clay out and the rodeo, all those things still bring in a lot of people? Christmas, do you think?
Clark Well I think that it's always a challenge to get people here in the winter time. Most of our traffic tourism wise is from Denver, from in state. And they come here not necessarily to ski, at least to Colorado Springs because there's no skiing here. And so I think that there is a certainly a draw here from people from Denver to get away from what they think is the big big city to the smaller community. Colorado Springs is very different from Denver.
Smith Our winters aren't severe though.
Clark No.
Smith I know it's tough getting some people out here and convincing them.
Clark Golf in the winter time!
Smith Right, exactly, you never know.
Clark Grasses are a little dry.
Smith Right.
Clark It's Colorado Springs though.
Smith Do you think some of today's terrorism has caused any problems with tourism?
Clark I think that initially there certainly was, I mean after 9/11. We saw an extreme drop off mainly because the airlines were down there for a while. And then it started to recover and then we dealt with the Hayman fire which was the next big disaster that happened in this area. Colorado Springs was on the map of being on fire and so nobody wanted to come, people were canceling reservations. We’d try and say there is no fire in Colorado Springs and they didn’t believe you. But I saw in the news that it's right near Colorado Springs. And so and the state is on fire and when only -- I think it was 4% of the state that was having fires. It was all over national and international media. And I know the Broadmoor lost some considerable international travelers. Some people that have seen it on international news and thought I'm not going to Colorado, it's on fire. And so it was just kind of unfortunate that we had a couple of -- when we were finally starting to recover then we had another disaster that had nothing to do with 9/11, it just had to do with drought. And that's impacted us certainly. And now this is the first year we're seeing -- last year was slightly coming up and then this year we're seeing a better resurgence. At least knock on wood that it will stay that way.
Smith Right. Back to when I came out in '92. To me there was a lot of people around from all different states. I was just right in the bunch with all of them.
Clark And you normally, I don’t see as much anymore, but all of a sudden usually when Labor Day or when Memorial Day hit, all of the sudden you’d start seeing all the out of state license plates. And you knew right away, tourist season was upon us.
Smith Right.
Clark Yeah.
Smith Exactly.
Clark And I don’t think we see that for the onset yet again. But everybody seems to be doing a little bit better so that's encouraging.
Smith And I notice being polite on the road helps too, when I see a plate…
Clark Somebody's like…
Smith Oh they don’t know what it’s like.. it’s like me coming here. But when I see other plates I tend to just for the city … you know back off and let them cut or get in front if they need to. You just show a little courtesy and like we're friendly here.
Clark Yeah. [laughter]
Smith And any significant majority of ethnic groups who visit our area, or a different kind, that you see more than others?
Clark We don’t really, I mean we don’t keep track of lot of that. I mean we see everyone from young couples up to senior citizens that travel with us.
Smith So a whole mix?
Clark We'll see more of the over 55 group after Labor Day because it tends to be they wait until a lot of kids are back in school and then they travel while the weather is still nice but it's still -- it's quieter and a little more relaxed. For as right now most of our guest are really really busy, they're all going to Pikes Peak and white water rafting. And really busy during the day whereas in the fall, people are a little more leisurely timed. They don’t have to see everything in one day.
Smith Yes. Well they have maybe more time too. They spend more time. How long would you say it takes to see everything there is to see in Colorado Springs?
Clark Oh gosh I know if you were to say everything, it'd take you two weeks. But from all the attractions, museums, from the Figure Skating Hall of Fame to the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. I always encourage people to go over and take a look at the Broadmoor and walk around the lake and just sort of see as much as they can. And we try and gauge [inaudible]. We try and engage them to find out what it is they like to do because everyone's tastes are different. Some may want to go to the zoo, others may want to go the Fine Arts Center. Sometimes they might want to do both of those things. And they want to go for a hike or they want to go to the Pioneers Museum or they just want to go and shop and go to nice restaurants. And so the benefit I think of having a B&B is that you can really get to know your guest. And kind of get the individual taste of where they want to go to dinner and what they want to spend. How dressed up they want to get.
Smith Right. And you have all the menus from all too.
Clark Right.
Smith And is Colorado Springs in the TV ads, radio ads?
Clark Yeah. Colorado Springs Convention Visitors Bureau I was just recently, just today, was appointed to the board to represent El Paso County. They do an extensive marketing campaign.
Smith I don’t see a commercial on TV.
Clark I'm not sure that they're doing much here. Most of their focus is out of state. Having a website is important, having those visitor guides, they print about 700,000 visitor guides every year. And send those out first class. And as an example, I was trying to remember it was in the report today, I think was it… it was last week. They sent out like 1,200 guides in one week. And those flew out first class. So that's a lot of money, I mean that's a lot of mailing. And then of course we keep guides here and a lot of the hotels give them out. So it's really important, I mean people want the internet but I'm surprised at a number of people that still want something printed in their hand or they want you to mail it to them. So we answer leads through the Visitor's Bureau every week. And most of the time that they leave an email, I'll go ahead and just email them and ask them if they want a brochure because sometimes I don’t want to just be sending out hundreds of brochures. And not knowing if they really want one or not. And then they have to email me back and then I'll go ahead and mail the brochures.
Smith And that makes sense.
Clark Yeah.
Smith That's wise. And you think all those computer technology -- by the way your website is lovely. I love the virtual tour. That was awesome! That's beautiful.
Clark Well and we redid that just last year and I think it's made a considerable difference in our bookings. And we just received, the day before yesterday, an award from Arrington's Inn Traveler Magazine as being one of the best Bed and Breakfast in the nation for anniversary honeymoon. For the second year in a row, we got the award. And they were actually nominations sent in by our guests. So that constitutes above the top 3% of Bed and Breakfasts in the United States and Canada. So I just I think it's really important to keep your stuff up to date. We change our packages real frequently. I go and update them on a regular basis, so stuff doesn’t get old. And people go and they oh well this package looks from like 1999. What are they doing on here! So you have to really keep up with it.
Smith Okay.
Clark But the web is the newest instant brochure, instant pictures. More detailed pictures than you can get in a print brochure. And so being able to make a reservation online without ever having to pick up your telephone. We're sort of lazy travelers I guess. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t because by the time somebody emails me, I could’ve picked up the phone and booked someone else in that room. And so there's a lapse time in between. But people sometimes don’t -- they want the personal contact when they get here. But it's really a little scary for them to even call the telephone number.
Smith How about the travel agents?
Clark We get very little travel agent bookings. I just don’t think they're used to dealing with Bed and Breakfasts. In general, I mean we'll take travel agent bookings but we don’t get too many of them. They’re used to booking several different places and just canceling the reservations if the guest, or client doesn’t want them. And we don’t encourage that because we're so limited on number of rooms. But if we hold one room, it could be the last room we have and then turn people away and then they cancel the reservations. So we're very careful about how we book those. But not -- I mean we get some travel agents. We're getting more business people as well. We're looking to put in, well probably in the next couple days, wireless internet. We have high speed for me but the guests don’t have it yet. And so we're -- rather than to rewire the whole house, we're just going to put in a wireless system. So that they can access that, they have dial up in their rooms but a lot of more people are going to wireless. So things that we didn’t have when we first opened like TVs, telephones, we have DVD players, we have CD players in the rooms. We have refrigerators in every room. Fluffy robes, triple sheeting which is the upper end kind of bedding. Those kind of things that we didn’t have when we first opened. So I think there is certainly a little change in the level of our service to meet the demands of the guests that stay with us. And that makes a big difference I think and your guest satisfaction.
Smith I agree. Okay, the other positions that you have -- when I did some research on the news finder with Pikes Peak Library, it mentions that you're our county commissioner for District 3 and you're a city council member or were.
Clark I was.
Smith You were on the utilities board?
Clark Correct.
Smith 1994 you served on the state's Tourism Board as Chairman of Finance?
Clark We had no money but it was a really easy job.
Smith All right.
Clark There's a very small pot of money because there was not much there.
Smith And then you were on the Innkeepers Association. You founded that!
Clark I served on the board for seven years.
Smith And then founded the Holden House Inn? Did I get about everything?
Clark I think so. I think -- I serve on a lot of other, I've done a lot of other things like… I’m co-chair of the Go Red for Woman campaign for heart disease in women with the Heart Association right now. The second year in a row I’ve co-chaired that. And I serve on several other boards and I'm liaison as a County Commissioner to many other departments. So for instance, I'm liaison to the Health Department to the Emergency Services Agency Board to Department of Human Services. I deal with a lot of times, a lot of constituent issues with food stamps. And things like when somebody can't get their utilities turned on or needs help with a leak. So I deal with a lot of social services issues. I'm liaison to 911 Authority. I tend to focus on emergency services, health issues, tourism. So things that I feel certainly sort of a passion towards. I’m vice chair of the commission. There's five commissioners and there's a chairman and a vice chair. So when the chairman is not there then I serve as the chair.
Smith So you have a busy busy, busy busy.
Clark Yeah I'm on the RTA Oversight Committee. The Rural Transportation Authorities. And on that board as well. So there is a lot of things that I do that even if we don’t have meetings like we’re down to Thursday meetings only now, I'm just incredibly busy doing that. And then I just -- I don’t know, I have the best few jobs I could possibly have.
Smith When does your day start?
Clark I usually get up between 6:30 and 7 everyday. No matter whether it's Monday or Sunday it doesn’t matter. And depending on the day and how my day is scheduled, I try and be here as much as I can for breakfast. I'm not always here but I try and see my guests in the morning if possible. Or in the evening if I'm here in the evenings. And then I have really excellent assistant innkeepers who work for me that are just marvelous with our guests. And so I feel very comfortable with that.
Smith When do you wind down?
Clark 10 o'clock usually, 10 or 10:30. And I'm answering emails during the day whether it's the county commissioner. I have to be quite a multitasker because one minute I'm taking a reservation and the next I'm answering a constituent issue on the planning issue or something. It's kind of like back and forth, I’ve still got to do my sales tax reports for tomorrow so I've got to get those done and keep up with that. And Tiffany who works for us helps me with the income but I still have to do the check posting and all of the bill paying and all that. So I've got an accountant that does that.
Smith That's a lot. I read also you ran for mayor?
Clark I did twice and didn’t succeed either time. And so I'm done for mayor for a while.
Smith When was the year?
Clark 1999. And then I ran again. I was elected to City Council in 2001. And then in 2003, the mayor's seat came up again and it was term limited. Mary Lou Makepeace was term limited. And four…let’s see one…there were four of us from City Council who ran for mayor. There was Jim Null, Ted Eastburn, Lionel Rivera and myself and Lionel ended up winning. But due to that, it gave me an opportunity to run for County Commissioner. So I'll be there I hope for eight years. Because that will be, I’ll be term limited. I just I really love my job as Commissioner, they make a good salary, Commissioner pays very well compared to City Council. So I think I got the better job.
Smith You got the better one, okay.
Clark It just took me a while to get there. And I don’t think I’ll run for Mayor for a while.
Smith I think so. Okay, that's from the kind on the back burner, right?
Clark Give me eight years and then I'll think about again.
Smith Okay, all right! How do you think your career compares to other cities?
Clark In terms of?
Smith In a typical day, all what you're doing would you want to do it in a different city? Do you think you'd have it easier, harder… [audio stops] [00:47:22]
Clark Yeah I'm sure if I was like in Victor, Colorado or in Teller County it would be a lot different than running El Paso County.
Smith Right, it’s much smaller. I read about that you want to try to protect homebuyers from the meth Labs, I read that.
Clark Well I worked with the Health Department before I was a County Commissioner with CONO, with Council of Neighbors Organizations. And we supported meth lab legislations to get some standards for Meth Lab clean ups. There was a young lady who had moved in to a home that had had a meth lab in it, she didn’t know it when she bought it. And it was her first home, it was a HUD home and when she got in they started getting sick. And she found out from her neighbors that it had been a meth lab in the house and it had been raided and never disclosed to her. And so she ended up losing most everything, she recently got a settlement from HUD and got a lot of her money back and was able to purchase another house from what I understand. But it was a terrible ordeal for her. And she wasn’t a rich person, it was the first home she’d ever bought. So it was a really unfortunate incident but through that she was able to help us with getting the legislation through the sub standards.
Smith It pretty much has to be demolished don’t they?
Clark Sometimes, it depends. The chemicals get in everything, they get in the walls and sometimes they have to tear out all the dry wall and be down to the bare beams and then rebuild everything. And sometimes they're so bad, they do have to be demolished. Because the chemicals just sink in and dry out.
Smith Well I'm glad you're doing that. I’m glad.
Clark So I feel very strongly about public safety and those kinds of things.
Smith Great. And did you have to overcome any obstacles in your life? In your career, in your positions, did you encounter any with prejudice or anything?
Clark No. I think one of the things that I look very young and so I've had people say to me, we didn’t vote you the mayor because we wanted somebody older. And I look like well how old do you think I am? And they're like well you're in your thirties, and I went no I'm 45 and they're like, you're 45? So I think I've always had looked kind of young and I don’t know whether that means young and inexperienced looking. I've had to overcome shyness in myself. And I love public speaking, it's sometimes easier for me to speak to a group of a thousand people than it is for me to speak one on one. But I think I do it pretty well. I’ve sort of overcome that a lot. But I think that when I first got involved in the fire station issue for instance, I was pretty naïve about how things operated at the city. And certainly learned a lot along the way and have learned a lot through the years that I served. I was off city council again, I mean I just one day decided in 1999 I don’t know what I was thinking. I called up my friend, Margaret Radford who was a councilwoman and said hey and (she wasn’t a councilwoman at that time), she was working on the Rock Island Trail and the Constitution widening and cut through issue. And I said I've decided to run for mayor and she went okay I'll help you. And the next thing we knew we were both embroiled in politics. And never either one of us ever thought that at that point that we would ever be running for -- helping me run for mayor and then both running for city council and getting elected together which is really nice. And then I ran and lost again for mayor and ended up off Council and she was still on then, she ran for county commissioner when I ran and she lost, but she kept her council seat and then had to run again for city council. So it was just kind of like -- I mean I'm not saying it was easy but I think that it certainly established a sure character in some way. And I think it's important for young women to not be afraid and I hope that I can serve as some sort of a role model to say don’t give up. It's not easy to do anything, no matter what you're doing. I was a tennis player when I was younger and played in school on the varsity team. And so I really I think established a lot -- that was a lot of character building. You didn’t win every tournament, I played doubles so if I screwed up, my partner could blame me. And if my partner screwed up it was her fault. And learning to do teamwork, I mean I think that it's really important to stick with stuff and not just give up and go away and be mad and give up. It's just not meant to be sometimes in that particular way. And I think my faith and the fact that I believe strongly that fate comes in to play sometimes and it's just not meant to be. And so something else, the minute you've set that aside and say okay done with this. Something else comes along that's even better than what you thought, than what you originally thought your goal was. You’ve got to be adaptable.
Smith Is that something you’d probably say to someone like 100 years from now? If they were reading in the book, if the historical society goes to make that book, would you say something like that to someone 100 years from now?
Clark Oh yeah. I think that you have to keep trying and you try and instill in your children and… we don’t have kids but my parents always said whatever you put your mind to do, you can do. And don’t be afraid of trying and failing. Because it's okay to fail because then you figure out how to do it better the next time. And you come back and unfortunately I didn’t do it better the second time I ran for mayor. [laughter] Probably I shouldn’t have run for mayor but if I hadn’t run for mayor, I'd probably wouldn’t be on the county commission.
Smith There you go exactly, experience. So your mentors in your life are it… sounds like your parents?
Clark Yeah. My mom and dad I think were big mentors for me.
Smith Any other -- another woman that has inspired you that's non-family? Any famous or maybe not famous?
Clark I really didn’t.
Smith Or a man?
Clark Yeah. I really don’t think I had any like movie star role models or anything like that. I think I was more kind of a down home kind of girl and saw my dad work really hard for his community. And my mom worked really hard for her community. And I really think that they were major players and role models in my life. I certainly respect those that have been in government and have been able to succeed despite obstacles. And I really admire Laura Bush greatly, I admire Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Cheney with that too. But Laura to me is just an amazing role model for young women. As First Lady she has so much class and just so much compassion and genuine caring. And I also think that she just really instills confidence in women. That it's okay to be feminine and still be strong. And there's a balance there between knowing how far to be strong without coming across as your whining or your -- I won't use the word. [laughter] The b word but that -- I mean that that can happen. And people think if you're feminine, you can't necessarily be strong. Very strong women, Mrs. Dole as well, Elizabeth Dole I think in a political realm has always been very strong, very smart, ran the Red Cross, she was Secretary of State I think she was at one time. And now as a senator and just always dressed beautifully, always speaks very well. Our Lieutenant Governor is a good example of that. Jane Norton has been an extremely good role model for women to say you can get to the top, that's it's okay for women to… here in El Paso County we haven’t done a very good job mentoring our women to succeed up into politics. And that's -- we have Lynn Hefley and that's it. I mean she's the one person in our female delegation here at our state level that is an elected official, as a state representative. And not that there… maybe there aren’t women that had really cared to run, I don’t know or maybe it's just too scary to run.
Smith That could be, yes.
Clark Because it gets pretty personal sometimes. And you're accused of all kinds of things you didn’t do. And or they turn everything around, something that you did and you're like that's not what happened! That's not true! And your husband wants to go beat them up and you're like no honey, you can't do that!
Smith Not that route, right?
Clark Yeah. That would really get us on the front page of the paper.
Smith There you go. And not where you want to be in for that.
Clark No!
Smith And the best time in your life in Colorado Springs or elsewhere? The best time you've had?
Clark Oh. I am sort of a cup is always half full kind of person and I always try and look for the good parts in people. I mean I loved opening the Bed and Breakfast in 1986 and I still love it today. And I think that's a key to survivability. And I think part of that is because I have really energetic staff people, the innkeepers that work for me…instill loyalty and instill quality and have the enthusiasm for the inn that brings more enthusiasm to me. So that you don’t get burned out.
Smith And was there ever a worse time in your life? Were you sad, depressed?
Clark I think it was hard when I was a Navy wife and I got married and a month later my husband left for six months. And I was -- we were in Coronado which was a lovely place to be but it was challenging because I never lived away from home. So my parents at least were only a couple of hours away. But it's like hi honey, love you, bye! And I know that there are so many young military families that are going through the same thing right now. And so I certainly have an appreciation for our military. Not just the service people that leave but the families that are left behind and that's a real challenge.
Smith Yeah, very hard.
Clark And so many wives who had babies when their husbands were gone and the husband wasn’t there to hold your hand and watch you scream. But I think that was hard. That was a big growing up lesson for me. But it was also an opportunity, I found a job and started a practice with the doctor who had faith in me that I was 20 years old and could still organize her office. And she had faith in me and she was a great role model too.
Smith What was her name?
Clark Dr. Herbst, Laurel Herbst. And she is the Director of the San Diego Hospice. And at the time, I helped her to open her first office and was her only employee when we started. And now she doesn’t have her private practice anymore, she's just working for hospice. But she was a great businesswoman and very organized, very over achiever and maybe that's where I get some of my drive to just go wild because she was like that, she was nuclear powered. And she just would go and go and go. [laughter]
Smith I like that term.
Clark She just went and went and went. And it was great. We had an all female office and working for a female doctor was great and she was an incredible role model for me too. The women who can succeed in business and still have their compassionate side. She was a wonderful doctor dealing with cancer patients. And very intelligent.
Smith Do you still communicate with her from time to time?
Clark A little bit, we usually exchange Christmas cards. I've been to San Diego and visited her and seen her again and she says to me all the time, every time I see her she's like so are you sure you don’t want to move back to San Diego and need a job? And I'm like no, I'm pretty well settled. She's like well you could come back anytime. And like no, no that's okay Laurel.
Smith And your proudest achievements, sounds like many of them?
Clark Yeah. The most memorable, I wouldn’t say that it was an achievement but the most memorable moment I think in my life will probably be the speech that I gave at the Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial in the year after 9/11. In 2002, in September 2002, I gave a speech to 10,000 people at Memorial Park after 9/11. And it's the one moment that I will probably I'll never forget it, probably because it was so fresh in all of our minds. But first of all having a personal affinity towards firefighters and my fire station, and then succeeding and running for mayor and the firefighters supported me for mayor the first time when I lost. And then supported me when I ran and succeeded for council and then being asked to give a speech about momentous occasion among all men who were the IFF guys from International Association of Fire Fighters… are all men. And so you had the… fire chief spoke and Mike McNeil spoke and Harold Schaitberger and Congressman Heffley. And I was the only female to speak to the families. And so it was quite emotional.
Smith Were you scared?
Clark I was -- no, I was afraid I was going to break down in tears. And Margaret Radford helped me write the speech, she's an incredible journalist and wrote for the Gazette. And she’s not just councilwoman but she's an amazing writer and she and I worked on the speech together and used excerpts from America the Beautiful. At the setting at Memorial Park and the cameras were looking back at the peak and it was a clear day. And it was just really an amazing opportunity.
Smith I think my brother in law went there, he's a firefighter.
Clark And I didn’t want to give the same old government speech. I wanted to do something very special and I think that's the way it came across. That we cared about them as people, not just…. I didn’t want to get political that day. And I think we succeeded. And as Margaret was sitting out in the audience and my parents were sitting in the front row, it was just a perfect day. I mean it was -- I'm sorry that it had to be. 434 firefighters died that year. But that's probably -- I don’t think there's any memory that will… at least I don’t think so. I hope not in that type of a venue. I mean there were other speeches that I give that will be memorable. I don’t think there's ever one that will top the…just the ability to reach out to families and say it's okay we understand, we’re here for you.
Smith That's nice.
Clark And in fact the next morning, parts of my speech ran in front of the Denver Post and I was just like I don’t believe this.
Smith Oh that's great! I might have to look that up, on the news for the Denver paper. It sounds like that was maybe your proudest achievement as well?
Clark Yeah. And again I don’t know that that was an achievement. It was just a memorable part of my life and very grateful to be given the opportunity by IFF to have faith in me, to allow me to step out on to a stage on that kind of an occasion. Because you would have thought here I was a council member, although it was my council district, I was not the mayor. And they asked me.
Smith Very nice. Your plans for the future?
Clark I don’t know. Just to do my job and try and juggle everything successfully. And I mean I have a lot of strategic things I want to do for the county. And I have so many plans and probably not enough time.
Smith Not enough time, we need 25 hours right?
Clark Yeah.
Smith And so you will stay in Colorado Springs?
Clark Yeah.
Smith And no plans to move back? Okay.
Clark I'll be an innkeeper until I really am old and gray.
Smith Nothing wrong with that.
Clark Is your inn for sale? We hear it all the time, we hear the rumor but it's not us though. Unless someone comes along with the right offer, I'm not moving.
Smith Is there anything in Colorado Springs you would change? One thing stands out?
Clark I think that I would like to see our -- the people who live here understand that government really tries to operate as efficiently as possible. And that we try to do more with less all the time. But then there's a point where you can only do less with less. And we have to make sure that people understand that for what you give, what you get back. Certainly to support the organizations that are not governmentally funded. And to just remember that quality of life is about more than just roads and bridges, it's about caring about people, it's about having open space, it's about having a safe place to live. Whether that means fire and police or sheriff's department and those that put their lives on the line for us. I think that's the one thing. And sometimes the mentality or not necessarily the mentality but the philosophy of some of our -- of the citizens is that they don’t want government at all. And I think that the government really tries hard to make it work. Regardless of whether you're Democrat or Republican, we all think we're doing the right thing. And sometimes you're on the majority and sometimes you're on the minority. It just depends on the day that you vote. But I think we're all trying to do our best and thinking about how to have a brighter future. I really think that -- again I'm one of those person, that people that when confronted with a bunch of lemons, I make lemonade. I just feel like -- not that I don’t like to make lemonade anyway because it's kind of what I do. Lemonade and cookies are always good. But I just think that sometimes we get so wrapped up in ourselves, we don’t think about the great things that our community has here to offer. And we wouldn’t have Red Rock Canyon today if it weren’t for the fact that many people worked. First of all, I'm just wanting to have that as open space, it started with that. And many things happened along the way. That if one thing had gone wrong, the whole thing would have fallen apart. But to me it's encouraging that the voter's decided that they wanted to extend our open space tax in order to pay for things like that. But they see a value beyond -- we want to get from point A to point B but if point B isn't something that you want to go to, what's the point of building the road?
Smith True, that's true.
Clark That's frustrating to me sometimes. Or when I hear -- I've had people call me on the phone and say that all politicians are just corrupt and lining their pockets with the dollars of the taxpayers. And I'm like look my pockets aren’t real lined right now and be careful about over generalizing. Certainly there are bad politicians and there are also just bad people in the world that end up in the criminal justice center. And I'm sorry about that but there's a lot of good people too. And don’t over generalize that we're all that way. And I think that Colorado Springs sometimes gets a reputation one way or the other. I don’t see that our community is not diverse at all. I think that we are very diverse. I think that we have great religious organizations, we have great arts organizations, we have so many benefits. And there are good developers. There are developers that want to -- they see a vision and look at the Extreme Makeover house and that whole story. I mean those are things that -- there was a young man who fell at Garden of the Gods and I can’t think of Jeremy’s last name, but he was paralyzed. And the House and the Building Association rebuilt his house so he could have access to a handicapped area and be able to get around his home. And so I think that there are stories where we sort of over generalize things. And we have to be careful to remember there's -- don’t think that everybody is that way just because you think of…
Smith One person.
Clark Yeah.
Smith Right.
Clark Yeah. So that makes me kind of angry sometimes.
Smith Okay. And what's the greatest thing in Colorado Springs? It kind of like you might just already said it too.
Clark No, I think that it is the fact that we -- I think we have an extremely diverse community. Because we have Colorado College and the Air Force Academy. We have good community colleges, we have UCCS or whatever it's called now, CU Springs? I can never remember that. And then we have like I said arts organizations, different -- a great tourism industry, great attractions for people to come and visit, wonderful city, county parks, places for kids to play, ball fields. You know whether it's a ball field, El Pomar and the Sports Center and we’ve got great non-profit organizations to support us here in this area. We have a lot to be grateful for and we have a lot of improvements still to make. So I'm going to busy for the next at least eight years.
Smith Okay. And what would you say to somebody moving out here or wanting to visit Colorado Springs, what would you say to them if they wanted to move out here?
Clark Well I think I would say that we have a lot of choices when it comes to where you want to live. Whether you want to live in the country, in the city, whether you're into historic preservation which is sort of our side of town here. I I love to see people move in to the west side and taking an old, run down Victorian and decide that they want to love it back to life again. And I've always felt that houses somehow, the old saying if walls could talk, maybe we wouldn’t want to hear it, I don’t know! But I've always felt that if Isabelle Holden could look down on this house today, having built this house in 1902, she would be smiling saying thank you for taking care of my house. I've always felt that houses had personalities of some sort, that there was a life in them. And when they get neglected, they just need a little bit of love.
Smith There you go.
Clark And I think that there is… places that you could move that are more in the mountains and I love my district which is primarily the western part of the city and county. And so I love Chipeta Park and Green Mountain Falls and sleepy little towns and Manitou for its incredible sort of wackiness. But they have, Manitou has a spirit all of its own, it's different from Old Colorado City, it's different from Colorado Springs. And you know that's not a bad thing. It just makes Manitou… Manitou, it's a little quirky.
Smith There you go. So Elizabeth Holden owned the house?
Clark Isabel.
Smith Oh Isabel, Isabel Holden. Had it built in 1902?
Clark First she, then her children. They originally had a ranch out on Bijou Basin which is at the southern tip of Black Forest.
Smith Oh okay.
Clark And the Holden Ranch is still out there. It's a beautiful farm house. And she and Daniel lived out there on the plains. Well it's sort of rolling hills and some pine trees close by but it's very pretty. And they built the house and were ranchers and then Isabelle -- Daniel died in 1896, there was a cholera epidemic and he died of cholera. And so then she decided to move to town and build a home for her six children. And many of the Holden family members are still on the west side. Some are buried at -- not Fairview but in the Manitou Springs Cemetery. Isabel and Daniel are buried at Evergreen and they have a fairly large monument built. And they came out from Iowa in 1854.
Smith Wow, that's interesting. When you renovated, did you find any artifacts?
Clark We found some old newspapers, I don’t think I kept them, they were within one of the floors and as insulation in one of our bathrooms. And they were dated to like 1946, they were Gazette from 1946.
Smith Wow!
Clark The fashions of the day were great.
Smith Quite a bit different.
Clark Yeah.
Smith Wow, that's interesting.
Clark But we really didn’t find, we didn’t find a whole lot of real artifacts. The house had been vacant for seven years. So pretty much everything had been removed out of the house.
Smith Okay.
Clark There wasn’t much left.
Smith Okay. Do you have any more history on Isabel or can it be found on the internet maybe?
Clark I have just kind of what’s in my brochure. I don’t really have a whole lot on her except the little bit of history I got. But they were fairly prominent in the area. He was at one time the president, I believe it was the Colorado Springs Exchange Bank, the Mining Exchange Bank.
Smith Oh yeah. Okay.
Clark They owned a lot of mining interests in various Colorado towns. And that's how we named our guest rooms. So we have like Silverton and Gold Field and Aspen, Cripple Creek and Independence which all were mining towns or mines that they owned interest in. So we tried to carry through with the historical theme.
Smith Beautiful. All right, I thank you very much.
Clark All right.
[00:76:46]
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